Unlocking the power of change

Change is extremely difficult, at both the personal and organizational level. However, there are some practical ways to harness what science knows about brain functioning to help us prepare for change, implement change and make sure that it keeps happening for both personal and business success.

Happy New Year to all! You know what that means, yes? Aaaah, New Year’s resolutions. How many times have you made one of these only to find that you’ve relapsed back to your old habits within a week? According to the Journal of Psychology, only 8% are successful in maintaining their New Year’s resolutions! Why is that? Because behavioral change is hard. Really, really hard! And in our current era of constant demands for rapid change, we must harness our knowledge of brain science to change ourselves–and the organizations we work in.

 “It is not the strongest or the most intelligent of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, it is the one that is most adaptable to change.” Charles Darwin

The hardest thing you’ll ever do

We know how hard it is to make changes in our personal lives. And if it’s so hard to change ourselves, how can we successfully implement large-scale changes in organizations? Taking into account how our brains manage change can help us maximize the likelihood of sticking to our New Year’s resolutions AND the success of adopting new processes within our organizations.

Change is usually implemented with a desired result in mind. Losing weight, learning a new skill, improved organizational performance or financial gains. Within organizations, the complexity of collective behavior makes the challenge even greater. Furthermore, as with repairing a ship while it is at sea, these changes must be implemented in conjunction with normal day-to-day operations.

So the only thing we need to do is change behavior and practices. Sounds easy, right?

How to make our brains work for–not against–us

But one of the biggest impediments to change is our brain’s natural tendency to push back against any new activity or behavior. Habits are what keep us tied to old ways of doing things.

As in our personal lives, working in any organization leads people to adopt repetitive patterns of thinking and behavior. These ‘habits,’ or acquired behaviors or thought patterns, are formed after a person has learned something new. These patterns have been repeated so many times that they become unconscious and almost automatic.

So what is it about habits that are so powerful and prevent us from changing? Much of the time, habits are hard to break simply because they begin as enjoyable activities, which we want to repeat. When we do pleasurable things, our brains release dopamine, a chemical that activates the brain’s reward center. This encourages us to do these things again, and the activity becomes a habit. And, returning to old habits makes us feel comfortable.

Another significant reason why habits are hard to break is related to what researchers call our “cognitive script” – these are the unconscious, automatic thoughts we have when we encounter a situation.

These thoughts are based on previous experiences. So, if the situation is one that we’ve encountered many times before, we engage in ingrained behaviors without consciously thinking about what we’re doing. Our actions have become habitual.

The good news is that our brain’s neural connections continue to be flexible and adaptable throughout our lives and that we are not simply creatures of habit. We, humans, are particularly apt at changing and orienting our behavior toward longer-term goals and benefits.

“The quickest way to change the game is to change your brain.” Robin Sharma

The neuroanatomy of change or Why changing habits ain’t so easy

 So it turns out that habits, or ways of doing things or thinking, are hard to change because of the way the brain manages them. Many of our conventional patterns of thinking are held in brain circuits associated with deep, primal parts of the brain. These parts sit just beneath our gray and squiggly cerebral cortex. They include:

• the basal ganglia, or the brain’s “habit center”, which normally handles such semiautomatic activities as driving and walking
• the amygdala, a small, deep source of strong emotions such as fear and anger
• the hypothalamus, which manages instinctive drives such as hunger, thirst and sexual desire.

Information that is processed in these parts of the brain often is not brought to conscious attention.

The basal ganglia’s processing, in particular, is so quick compared to other brain activity that it can feel physically rewarding; people tend to revert to this type of processing whenever possible. Also, every time these neuronal patterns in the basal ganglia are called upon, they become further entrenched and form stronger connections. This helps explain why when people in a workplace merely talk about the way to do things, they often reinforce the link between their own neural patterns and the culture of the company. If an organizational practice triggers their basal ganglia, it can become collectively habituated and extremely difficult to modify.

As if turns out, we tend to feel comfortable with our habituated patterns of thinking and behavior. So if we want to create permanent new patterns of behavior, for ourselves and in our organizations, we must actually embed them in the basal ganglia.

Unfortunately, adopting new patterns of thinking or behavior, i.e. learning, often feels unfamiliar and painful, because it means overriding deeply comfortable neuronal circuitry. It also draws on parts of the brain that require more effort and energy to activate, such as the prefrontal cortex, which is associated with deliberate executive functions, including planning and thinking ahead. And the brain is inherently a lazy organ…

When people resist change within organizations, they may be collectively protecting their basal ganglia and amygdala-drive instincts (comfortable habits and fear of change) at the expense of the new goals of the organizations.

In the work place, being forced to try something new can actually cause fear and anger. This phenomenon, sometimes referred to as the ‘amygdala hijack’, can trigger the urge to flee or exhaustion disproportionate to the actual provocation. As you can imagine, facing such strong emotions, people are more likely than not to resist change. It also becomes difficult to think creatively and rationally in such situations.

To adjust for these realities, just as when we make personal changes, we need to prepare for organizational change in advance. We need to train ourselves and our organizations to recognize the source of strong emotions even as they are triggered, and to find more effective ways of responding.

So how can we use this knowledge of our brain’s behavior to help us make progress, personal or organizational, when we need to adopt new ideas, processes, tools or behaviors? Here are some elements to consider:

1. Your teacher was right: “Pay attention!”

Why is paying attention and being mindful so important to making changes? One of the main reasons is that it actually changes your brain. If we create enough conscious focus around new ideas, we actually make new connections. Neuroscientist Carla Shatz coined the phrase “Cells that fire together, wire together!,” indicating how we can consciously modify our inner workings.

As neuroscientists discovered, it turns out we need mindfulness: both thinking about what we are thinking and the moment-by-moment awareness of where our attention is focused. The 18th-century economic philosopher Adam Smith referred to this ability to look at ourselves think as an “impartial spectator.”

Once we can focus upon this impartial spectator, i.e. observe our own thinking process, the mere act of observing moves this activity to more deliberate, conscious brain regions, such as the prefrontal cortex. It can help us recognize when our old habituated brain patterns no longer serve us (or our organizations) well, and refocus those patterns into more beneficial directions. Research shows that moment-by-moment self-observation activates executive planning areas in the prefrontal cortex and deactivates areas involved in attention-distracting inefficient thoughts and behaviors.

But, paying attention to new ways of thinking and behaving can initially cause feelings of great discomfort. In turn, we may do all that we can to avoid the change. But this focus can in fact rewire our thinking habits. When we repeatedly pay conscious attention to desired thoughts and related goals, we shift this activity to the basal ganglia. When those circuits are shifted, ways of thinking and acting that at first seemed unfamiliar soon become habitual. And we become less emotionally reactive to these, which enables us to move forward with the change. But remember that replacing a first-learned habit or behavior with a new one doesn’t erase the original behavior. Rather, both remain in our brain. But we can take steps to strengthen the new ones and suppress the original one.

When you tell a child: “Don’t touch”, the primal brain ignores the ‘don’t’ and focuses on the message. This is the reason why it is much more effective to tell a child “Walk!”, rather than “Do not run”. In focusing attention in organizations, it is best not to tell people what they are doing WRONG, but rather accentuate what they’re doing right. When repeatedly thinking that you should NOT do something, you are unwittingly activating the habitual thoughts.

So, attention needs to be focused on the desired end state, not on avoiding problems. And this goal-directed positive reinforcement must take place over and over again. There are several ways for organizations to make it easier for people to do the right thing in their day-to-day work, repeatedly, until it becomes second nature.

 2. Buy-in is crucial

On a personal level, you must believe that the change you are trying to implement is worthy and has positive benefits in your life.

At the organizational level, you can’t simply tell people that they need to adopt whatever the change might be. You need to clearly explain why the change is in their best interest and that of the organization. They need to believe that the benefits of engaging in new behavior far outweighs maintaining old behavior. Otherwise, why should they bother?

Additionally, researchers have found that the best way to foster that belief in the change is to surround yourself with a supportive group of people. At the organizational level, it becomes imperative that all levels believe not only that the change is worthy, but that everyone is on board with it. Buy-in from leaders and peers becomes a powerful motivator.

Another element that must be taken into account is that the learning of new behaviors and ways of thinking takes some time, and this has to be accounted for in the organizational planning. Also, behaviors need to be consistently repeated over and over again so that it becomes easier for the brain to coast on pilot mode and reduce feelings of discomfort overall.

3. Lather, Rinse, Repeat – Then repeat again, deliberately

As far as implementing personal change, each time you repeat a particular thought or action, you strengthen the connection between a set of brain cells. According to neuroscientist Dr. Rick Hanson” “the mind and the brain are a unified system. As the brain changes, the mind changes. As the mind changes, the brain changes. This means that you can use your conscious mind to make lasting changes to your brain to bring about greater well-being and happiness in your life.”

But it takes discipline to develop new habits. In organizations, this means that the leadership must have a high level of self-awareness. The entire organization must be accountable to try and respond consistently to the required new ways of thinking and behavior. Repetition is crucial and organizations should use metrics to measure any change efforts. In this very deliberate way, organizations should determine and focus on what is most important.

New thoughts and behaviors must be implemented and repeated over and over again to become more automatic, reducing the impact on the emotional system and leading to better performance at work. Organizational practices must be based on such principles for maximum success.

4. Taking a step back and breathing is good advice

One of the things we need to do when faced with change is to attempt to decrease our personal attachment to the situation. This improves our ability to clear mindedly assess the content of our thoughts. One of the ways to achieve this is by relabeling the situation, meaning giving a new name to something. This may seem simple at first but it can actually calm emotions and engage the rational, upper cortical levels of the brain.

One study conducted had participants look at highly distressing images of car accidents, which elicited a very strong emotional reaction. When participants were asked to change their perspective by imagining they were the EMTs called to the scene, they became calmer and had a different perspective on the situation.

This simple act of relabeling changes the way the brain processes information in the emotion and instinct-related brain areas, including the amygdala and hypothalamus. When faced with the different perspective, the brain activity can quickly shift to the prefrontal cortex.

One of the other powerful things we can do is to reframe the collective habits that don’t work well. “The way we do things around here” may have been unquestioned for a long time, but leaders within organizations must communicate accurately and explicitly why it no longer works. Specifically articulating the desired future state and describing clearly the intent of the change can both be beneficial and also have the greatest impact on the prefrontal cortex.

When those behaviors are practiced regularly and consistently, this change rewires the basal ganglia and thus becomes a set of adaptive new habits. The prefrontal cognitive processing has become internalized into deeper parts of the brain. People can now do the ‘right’ thing without having to think consciously about it.

At both the personal and organizational level, we must also ensure that the new habits are in line with our goals. Refocusing can leverage our ability to call upon our impartial spectator, by discussing emotions honestly and reassuring through the broader perspective.

Ultimately, the goal is to engender an emotional state that is calmer, and that draws people back to more effective frames of mind and deliberate thinking.

5. Realize that you have the power to say NO

In one of the most discussed experiments in the history of neuroscience, Dr. Benjamin Libet used brain electrodes to assess the brain functions underlying simple finger movements. He discovered that three-tenths of a second before people are aware of the will to move their finger, there is a brain signal related to a desire for finger movement. A person may have the desire to move, but then choose not to move; these two thoughts — the desire and the choice — are separate.

We seem then to have the brain ability to quickly evaluate outside provocations and choose to stop dysfunctional impulses before they lead to action. We often believe that control over our impulses and automatic behaviors is limited, particularly in the case of such strong emotions as anger, frustration, enthusiasm, or grief. To an extent, that is true. However Libet’s work shows that people can always choose not to follow a particular impulse.

In organizations, when a strong impulse reflects “the way we do things around here,” there is always the option to veto the reaction, especially if people have been given the opportunity to practice this ability.

“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” George Bernard Shaw

As far as personal resolutions go, apply a couple of these ideas for yourself in the coming year. And here’s hoping your resolutions become realities.

Wishing you all a very Happy and Healthy New Year. Hoping to see you again on the blog very soon!

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