Build #59 - Resistance to change, busy work and a team conflict hack

Hola!

Once again Wednesday is with us, so I bring you the three most interesting things to cross my path this week:

​1. Why is change hard?​

Steven Schlafman’s essay takes a deep dive into change and why humans find it hard. He walks us through models of change, some flaws in the model thinking and some reflections on where the root of resistance to change might be found.

My take: A good deal of leadership is about setting the conditions for change to happen, so understanding what lies behind resistance to making change is valuable. It’s a long read and takes a couple of passes to really land, but Steven’s piece is worth the investment.

​2. Behaving as if you were trying to succeed

This article from David Maciver is a musing on a situation where someone focussed their attention on the job at hand, rather than outcome that job was meant to lead to - or as he puts it “People doing things as if the thing itself was the point… and not thinking about whether their actions will actually in any way help them achieve their goal.”

My take: This resonated with me as it hit my “busy work” sensitivity! It does amaze me how many people I see doing something because “that’s what they do” rather than understanding what the outcome is and why it matters. It’s the role of leaders to articulate those things in a relevant or engaging way. And if they can’t? Maybe it’s time to stop doing that thing?

​3. Dealing with conflict in teams ​

My fellow Extra Brain founding partner Damian wrote about his experience of dealing with conflict in his team. He shares a simple framework that helped him get his team to deal with conflict themselves and to reframe the nature of conflict.

My take: I liked this as it’s a simple, easy to deploy technique for leaders to use to get teams to self-diagnose and think about conflict, rather than pushing it to someone else who’s meant to have the magic key to solving it for them. Grab the technique and try it yourself!

I’m wondering what I should think about for next week’s Build.

I’ve got a few ideas floating around but nothing’s really grabbed me yet.

Any suggestions?

best,
-sw