Unfortunately, we are educated out of knowing how to change from a very young age.

Children learn (which means developing new abilities and skills) through self initiated experience. The truth is, we all change that way, except, when children are too young, we typically don't expect them to learn any other way. Think of common skills children acquire: eating with a spoon or riding a bike. Could you imagine how long it would take to teach a baby to eat with a spoon if we modeled it? "Here honey, look at mommy...now you do it..."

By the time kids are 8, they are already frequently on their way to losing that ability to change. Simple things that come from understanding how the brain works can help you support getting other people to change:

Natural change patterns: Language in school is still taught in fractions: kids learn grammar, vocabulary, spelling etc. It's much more interactive today than it was 100 years ago but still, teaching is falling behind. Universities such as UC Berkeley, as well as language learning software such as Rosetta Stone, use experience-based training models and are far more effective. For people to acquire change, be it learning a new language or developing a new skill, learning has to be done in the way that is natural for the brain. The more associations and relationships the brain can create, the more examples and case studies the brain identifies with the needed change, the more likely it is to acquire the new skill or behavior. Instead of repeating your expectations from your team, try creating variety and sharing many different examples instead.

Experience based: knowledge in the brain is stored and retrieved as knowledge. Experience, on the other hand, is more readily actionable. Have you ever tried lecturing to an 8-year-old about why what they just did isn't okay? If your speech goes on for more than a very few minutes, you may get a glassy look and a child who tries to figure out what you want to hear so that the speech will be over as soon as possible.  When we want a child to learn a new behavior, it is best to get them to practice the new behavior, not to go on talking to them about it. Same principle applies to your team.

Self Initiated: My child attends Science Club, and this year he is competing on the Rock team. In previous years the group's coach recited the names of the rocks and asked the kids to repeat after her: "This is Pumice, it is an igneous rock..." This year the group's coach played the game of "Hangman" with the kids: "Find the rock: _ _ m_ _ e ...is it Metamorphic, Igneous, or Sedimentary?" If you had to make an intuitive guess, which approach do you think worked better in terms of retention and retrieval?

The brain changes in a very specific way. If we follow the brain's "rules of engagement" we can generate new skills that can be acquired and applied in a lasting way. Click here to check out KCI's Acquisition System, following the the five stages the brain follows for acquiring change.

Trying to merge two very different cultures will result in significant attrition and an increased probability of failure. There's nothing new there. It makes one wonder why companies are not investing more in cultural integration as part of the process?

Unfortunately, decision makers have had good reason to avoid investing in cultural integration. Is cultural integration important? Sure, there are numerous studies proving it is. Is it important to do it as early as the DD stage? Sure, without a doubt.

But I wonder why, if it is that important, don't we see every M&A out there insisting on focusing on cultural integration. There are some pretty brilliant leaders out there after all. Why don't most leaders insist on including this aspect in their decision?

I'd like to propose it's not just ignorance or insufficient foresight on the part of leaders, and that change experts are only now starting to keep up with their side of the deal. Only a few years back, Six Sigma, one of the most reliable tools out there when it comes to assessing processes and cultures, reported a 70% failure rate, attributed directly to the integration stage. I can't begin to tell you how many change efforts, large and small, I have seen fail during the implementation stage. It's only in recent years, now that we better understand what it takes for people to shift from doing X to doing Y in a lasting way, that we are starting to see better success rates when it comes to integration. I firmly believe that, while we used to talk about "culture integration,"  the systems we had to meet this goal were misrepresented. With the tools we had at the time, we could frequently, at best, target sharing our assessment of the two cultures with the leaders of the M&A, try to tell them on how important it is for them to make needed changes, and then pray they listen. My point is, we didn't have access to the science that supports the "integration" part.

Unfortunately, cultural assessments can be done fairly efficiently, and potential areas of conflict can be identified and mitigation plans recommended fairly early, but without getting people to make needed changes, well intentioned remedies die on the vine, or get pushed out and addressed only after some of the damage has already set in.

As with many technological developments in history, I believe science has finally advanced enough to answer some tough questions. New developments in brain science give us keen insight into what it would really take to address the integration part of change.

• To understand integration, we need to understand change on the individual level: at the end of the day cultures don't change or adjust, people do. For integration to take place, we have to stop treating people en masse and start focusing on how individuals change.
• To understand integration, we need to understand brain change: adopting new values requires reinforcing actual new neural pathways in the brain. To get people to adopt new cultures, we must design change efforts to follow the requirements of creating new neural pathways.

With the right change system, M&As have a much greater chance for success. Instead of trying to force leaders to see the importance of cultural integration as part of M&As, how about designing change systems that are so good that leaders would be insane not to use them?

Needless to say, procrastination is not a positive contributing factor in teams. It reduces productivity of individuals and, if accepted, can infect the whole team. It can also lead to unhealthy team dynamics because procrastinators often behave like a volcano: they wait and accumulate stress as a result of constantly thinking about what they are not doing, until suddenly it reaches a boiling point and they respond frantically, wanting to attend to the tasks urgently.

According to Psychology Today, 20% of people identify themselves as chronic procrastinators: "For them procrastination is a lifestyle, albeit a maladaptive one. And it cuts across all domains of their life. They don't pay bills on time. They miss opportunities for buying tickets to concerts. They don't cash gift certificates or checks. They file income tax returns late..."

Everyone procrastinates sometimes, but 20% of people admit to chronically avoiding difficult tasks and deliberately looking for distractions. Considering the fact that  not all procrastinators acknowledge their time management habits, it's likely you know a procrastinator or two.

Like with any other habits, describing it is helpful only for identifying it. If we wish to support these people to develop new habits, we need to start looking at causes and remedies. The most common are:

Failing to link action-related thought to action: Thirst is an indication you need to take action and drink. If you repeatedly ignore thirst and skip drinking every time you are thirsty, your body will reduce the trigger, and you'll stop being thirsty as frequently. Procrastination behavior is affected by a similar mechanism: people start ignoring action-related thoughts and, if they do that frequently enough regarding little tasks, soon the smaller action-thoughts become less frequent. To stop procrastination, people need to start small, redeveloping the habit of responding to minor daily action-thoughts with action.

Curing the rebellious bug: Not surprisingly, procrastination is a response to a deeper emotional reason. In most cases it is an attempt to be in control of one's life, by not cooperating. It is very common for people who adopt procrastination to be brilliant individuals who are highly responsible and ethical. Typically they are excellent at what they do and they have very high standards, which they expect themselves and others to meet. Procrastination is a rebellion, the light of their hidden need for self-expression to shine above all the shoulds and other self-inflicted expectations. To overcome this need to procrastinate, procrastinators need to be more deliberate about choosing when to respond according to what they believe they should do or according to what they feel and want to do. It often feels counter intuitive to procrastinators, but the more choice and control they actually have over their lives, the less they'll need to rebel, hence, the less they'll procrastinate.

Like with any other change, people who procrastinate have a resistance response, which is why remedial coaching won't work with procrastination behavior (see the third stage in the five-stage acquisition model). As with the acquisition of any change, 90% of people will quickly stop cooperating with the acquisition process and get in their own way. The way to overcome their resistance will depend on the specific way they resist (which is very different for each team and individual). To learn more about resistance styles and how to overcome them, reach out. We'd love to chat with you about your procrastinator...

Brain science provides many insights that allow us to change these statistics and turn change more into a science (with predictable results and at least a 70%  success rate instead of 70% failure rate). Perhaps the most interesting of all is the understanding of the Choice-in-Action principle and its applications to change of any sort.

Is your organization going through a merger and are your people having a hard time adjusting? Are you trying to influence a team to change their dynamics? Is someone you know trying to acquire a skill or make adjustments that will lead to higher productivity? All of these, and many other big and small changes, can only bypass the random success rate if you design change efforts to incorporate the Choice-in-Action principle.

Choice-in-Action is a deliberate choice to DO something despite resistance. Yes, resistance is imperative for this equation. Without it, the choice is not solidified in the brain...go figure. If you want to acquire a new habit (let's say you want to stop smoking or start a diet) the most important thing is for you to keep doing it despite (and in the presence of) your own resistance. Choice-in-Action is so important that it trumps where your motivation comes from. This means that if you choose to change your diet in a lasting way, and you practice a new diet, despite your resistance over and over again, you will be able to adopt the new diet, even if your motivation was fear, anger or other such negative emotions. That is, provided your experience or conclusion about the diet is that it leads to subjective positive results. Force a child to eat broccoli - even though it's for the 'wrong' motivation - and if the child ends up experiencing broccoli as a positive thing, he will adopt the habit of eating broccoli (maybe even liking broccoli).

I know, with everything we are being taught about motivation, this sounds very suspicious. It gets even worse before it gets better: in the workplace, you can force, scare, threaten or use any other form of manipulation to successfully get people to change. If you have a mechanism that will keep them making Choice-in-Action despite their resistance, and if they will end up experiencing the change as a positive thing, they will make needed changes in a lasting way. Imagine getting a team to adjust to a new culture after a merger. What I'm saying is that if you have a mechanism that will force the team to choose to practice the new culture over and over again despite their resistance, they will acquire the new culture quickly and in a lasting way.

Here is where it gets better: it hides in the word "choice." There are two keys for people adopting a change in a lasting way:

1. The first is that people make a CHOICE to continue practicing despite their resistance.
2. The second is that they conclude that the experience was a positive thing.

You may very well force yourself to diet out of 'bad' motivations. Yet, if you'll end up concluding the diet is a positive thing after making repetitive choices in action, you will sustain it.

What does that mean when it comes to designing change efforts?

• Give people access to their own ability to change: Share with your team that in order to adopt a new ability, adjust to a new culture or sustain new habits, they need to repeatedly make a Choice-in-Action despite their resistance.
• Don't shy away from resistance, you need it: Instead of trying to make resistance disappear, use it to your advantage. People who know how to use their own resistance, can learn how to change, which is the most important building block for excellence.
• Monitor the conclusions people draw from experiences to the greatest possible degree: Talk to people about the conclusions they draw from experience. Give them ample examples that reinforce the conclusion you are trying to get them to adopt. The experience is only as important as the conclusion people draw about it. Talk to your sales people about which conclusions they draw when they meet with rejection; explore with your team which conclusions they draw from how meetings are run; talk to people about the conclusions they assign to things you say. Give people experience-based reference points (things you do and practical examples you can give) that reinforce a new conclusion.
• Be sure to listen: In doing so you won't find yourself trying to reinforce conclusions that make no sense to anyone but yourself.

Creating the right setting for change is not about being nice and hoping that people will follow you because they love you. It's really about building a relationship that will allow you to be in a position to get people to practice Choice-in-Action despite their resistance.

It’s objectively hard to  lead change today. Getting teams that are often not in the same physical location to execute according to plan, to get people to make adjustments where those are needed, in order to meet objectives and to keep teams invested and engaged, are all challenging and highly consuming. To lead changes, project managers need to have clear strategies and teams have to follow with excellent execution. It helps when leaders are strategic and teams understand the leader’s thinking so they can follow.

What does it take to be strategic?

Different experts will present you with different lists, but most would probably agree on the following:

• Being able to anticipate, detect and respond to ambiguous signals
• Think critically and question everything; challenge basic assumptions and search for root causes
• Identify and interpret patterns
• Make concise decisions
• Understand the agendas and motivations of other people
• Stay open to changing your efforts based on relevant feedback

Do the leaders in your organization have what it takes? What if they are missing one or more of the above? Do we honestly still believe that giving them some reading material or sending them off to a “strategic thinking” workshop will get them to adopt new abilities and become strategic leaders?

Ironically, the very component that is missing in bridging the disparity between expecting change and executing it is getting in the way of leaders developing the abilities to lead change. Both require people to change in order to achieve success and both omit the most important component: a system that will get people to change.

Do we really believe a leaders who isn’t making concise decisions will change without an acquisition system? Do we think giving that leader the formula others use will get him to change? How about leaders who jump to action or leaders who don’t think critically?

To get leaders to change we need to equip them with new thinking patterns AND with a system to integrate new thinking patterns.

Which system for integrating new thinking patterns has your organization provided its leaders with in the past? How do leaders in your organization go about acquiring abilities they are missing? Look closely at that, because if such a system is missing in developing leaders in your organization, it’s also missing when leaders are trying to get their teams to learn and improve.

Some articles emphasize the importance of setting goals correctly. Remember the SMART acronym (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound)? We've all been to that workshop, but so very few of us are applying it. As Martin Cobb so beautifully put it:“We know why projects fail; we know how to prevent their failure – so why do they still fail?” Good tools are very important but we need to make an evolutionary leap from developing tools to using them.

Can you enable your employees to follow a strategy? How can you ensure consistency across different touch points in your organization? If and when the strategy needs to be adjusted, is your organization capable of learning and responding with required agility. Let's face it, when teams can effectively learn, plan, interact and execute, setting the right goals is executed. Perhaps even more importantly, if people are "programed" correctly, setting the right goals becomes secondary in importance because an effective team will quickly discover goals that are off-track, responding quickly with needed corrections.

What does it take to align efforts with desired results?

The truth is, every team is different, and so the Key Strategies each team needs in order to be aligned with desired results differ from one team to the next. Here are two of the more common pitfalls and the Key Strategies we most commonly use to help teams overcome them:

• Jumping to a solution before considering the different options: To overcome jumping to conclusions, teams often need to reprogram a default response. Jumping the gun can be a result of a tendency to be creative and innovative when you need to be systematic and methodical (using synthesis thinking mode when you should be using analysis thinking). Some teams just love to innovate, they get excited about new ideas and they want to try them out. This not only leads to haphazard starts, it also makes teams change direction too often and too quickly, making it impossible for efforts to mature.

• Necessary information resides in silos: This can often be the result of people lacking systemic thinking Key Strategies. It happens when the default thinking patterns of leaders and teams are not taking into account system-wide implications and the need for coordination. As a skill, systemic thinking is just another idea that stays in the classroom. As a new imprint in people's brains, it prevents silos.

What gets in your team's way of aligning execution with business goals?