Change Management and Hard-Wired Resistance

It is often and wrongly said that we humans possess an inbuilt and “natural” resistance to change. This is not true. As Richard Beckhard and others have recognized, people willingly accept change if they see it as in their interests and feel they can retain some control over the means of implementation. The problem of change management is that people possess a bunch of illusory beliefs about self and society that derail the process at any of its stages, from conception to implementation. These same beliefs also mean that the insights of evolutionary psychology are often dismissed out of hand, and cannot be readily deployed to help evade the traps we repeatedly fall into. They include the following.

• Rationalism—the sense that with powers of reason we can tame or master the natural world, including our own impulses.

• Utopianism—the idea that we are building generation upon generation toward a world that is not just better materially, but happier.

• Perfectibility—the idea that through social engineering we can eliminate the ills that beset us, such as deviance, crime, drug addiction, and so forth.

• Optimism—the inclination for hope to triumph over experience, as we forget the past and forge on in the belief that the grass will be greener wherever we're headed.

• Overconfidence—the tendency to engage in risky projects, fueled by a belief that we can deal with whatever circumstances may throw at us.

• Pygmalionism—the belief that we can mold any human raw material, if we can get people early enough, into whatever social characters we wish.

• Hubris—the belief that the ego, self, or soul has some mystical transcendent quality, implying that we alone among creatures are immune to the laws of nature by virtue of “free” will.

Let us not forget that this belief set is what is also most noble and wonderful about the human spirit. Possession of these beliefs enables people to triumph over seemingly insuperable odds, to endure trauma and great hardship, and to engage in behaviors that are generous and self-abnegating for the benefit of kith and kin. Yet they underlie our greatest follies. Can we have one without the other? Most of what I have described comes from the gift that humans possess more than any other species—the ability to self-reflect. It is self-reflection that gives us our most grandiose illusions and at the same time allows us to make the widest array of choices.

Armed with insights about what stays the same—our true nature and the limits to change, the tug of the gravitational forces of our psychology, even when we are not aware of them—we can do better to design the shoe to fit the human foot. The self-reflexive gifts that lead us to these delusions are also potentially the means of our liberation. A true view of human nature does not release us from its grip, but it does forewarn and forearm, so we can build organizations fit for humans and school ourselves in practices that can steer us around our own most besetting difficulties.