OPINION: Viral change – a radical concept
"Change is most effective, permanent, deep and pervasive when it’s allowed to spread peer-to-peer, virally, and in human terms that make operational, on-the-job sense, rather than dictated from on high and pushed down to an enterprisewide audience," says Dr. Leandro Herrero.
Viral Change (2006), a book written by Dr. Leandro Herrero (pictured, right) represents an iconoclastic shift in thinking about change and the people side of change within medium size and large organizations.
Even if what the company is trying to change is something as organic as human behavior, he sees it as being hamstrung by a mechanistic concept of the organization – in which change must be big, “pushed through” and sold, and driven down the “plumbing system” of the hydraulic organization.
These ideas have been constructed to protect management fiefdoms, to line the pockets of large change consultancies, to avoid having to deal with the “unmanageable” realities of the organization – or they’re quite sincerely believed because the alternative is counter-intuitive (even though usually correct).
It’s a rational assumption to believe that organizationwide change of culture must require correspondingly big processes.
These universal “truths” of change management are now so widely entrenched in our thinking that we fail to challenge them any more – but, in his research and day-to-day practice, Herrero’s found they’re the very reason that so many change programs fail. The book has profound implications for communication because it suggests a radical alternative: viewing successful change as happening when it’s small, human, peer-influencing and viral.
In the process, Herrero comes to some eye-opening conclusions:
1. “Big change” doesn’t, in fact, require big actions
It’s a perfectly rational assumption, he says, to believe that a huge organizationwide change of culture and
behaviors must require correspondingly big processes, big management, lots of committees and a wide-ranging,
expensive program.
In fact, lasting change can never be enforced this way. It’s actually only hampered by such over-engineering. “A criticism often heard is that implementers failed to involve stakeholders and therefore ‘they’ (employees, for example) didn’t feel ownership,” he says. “My experience is completely different, actually exactly the opposite. You find Project Teams, Users Teams, Specification Teams, Steering Committees and other management paraphernalia that cushion the implementation, And, still, the implementation is over-budget, over-time, under-used and, in many cases, over-hated.”
The bigger the processes become, the more unwieldy the change program, and the smaller the likelihood that any kind of “real” change – to behaviors, attitudes and culture – can ever possibly emanate from it. Conversely, and counter-intuitively, successful behavioral and cultural change is actually the result of small actions in small, well-targeted groups of “key influencer” employees, who embody it personally and then spread it virally. In this model, the corporation has only the lightest touch – the power is in the social networks.
2. People aren’t “naturally resistant” to change
The truthful observation that change programs fail to resonate with some people has transmuted over time into
something that’s now taken as a de factotruth: that human beings are “naturally resistant” to change. Herrero
points out that, in fact, human beings and human life are change.
So why does everyone parrot this “truth”? It’s usually “wisdom” passed onto them at some point in their career, which they take at face value because they know of individual corporate instances of people rejecting change. But where this has shifted in the common consciousness – that therefore all or some humans are naturally resistant to change – is completely illogical.
The bigger the processes become, the more unwieldy the change program, and the smaller the likelihood that any kind of 'real' change.
These individual instances aren’t a “natural resistance”, but a justifiable fear of the consequences in a specific situation. Humans aren’t intrinsically wired as a default to reject change. They’re simply fearful that this change will be “bad change” again – something that’ll make their lives more complicated, won’t help them do their jobs more effectively, or will be abandoned midway through, leaving them to pick up the pieces. Nobody fears “good change” – that is, when it will mean smoother processes and the employee being able to do the job they want to do, in the manner they believe it should be done.
So, why would a knee-jerk response to news of change be fear? Because employees don’t know whether it’s going to be good change or bad change. “It isn’t change per sethat’s a problem,” explains Herrero, “but the ability to have some sense of control over events. For ‘control’, read also information, knowing what’s going on, the objectives of ‘the change program’ or simply personal involvement in the process.”
This has profound effects for managing change and the importance of informal, grassroots communication. It means that for change not to be resisted, you don’t have to overcome human nature – you simply need to involve employees in what’s happening and make them active participants in it, so that they know it’s “good” change.
3. A new culture program will never deliver new behaviors
Change programs are usually designed to create a culture, in the belief that this’ll then lead to the desired behaviors
in the workforce. But, in fact, says Herrero, this is also illogical – it’s behavior that drives culture, not the other way
around (see Figure 1, below).
Figure 1. Behaviors change culture, not vice versa
A top-down imposed “culture” doesn’t change behavior. But if you change the behaviors, you’ll have changed the culture. And how do you do that? The only thing that changes behaviors is an understanding of the specific, day-to-day actions that represent them – the “line of sight”.
Yet, typically, any large culture change will be so necessarily high-level (“business transformation”, “new customer-centric thinking”, “process streamlining”) as to have no hope of achieving that, even if it weren’t being pushed down from above – which is why so many change programs fail.
Instead, if you define actual operational behaviors in a small group, the culture they represent will, relatively quickly, spread upwards and outwards virally and become “the culture change” (see Figure 2, below).
Figure 2. Viral change process diagram
The concept in brief
In a nutshell, therefore, Herrero has found that change is most effective, permanent, deep and pervasive when
it’s reduced to an atomic level and allowed to spread peer-to-peer, virally, and in human terms that make
operational, on-the-job sense, rather than dictated from on high to an enterprisewide audience and pushed down:
- Small behaviors, small group: A small number of very specific behaviors are defined and encouraged in a small number of people.
- Social networks: Targeting those members of the group who have influence and impact, the organization brings those people into the process, making them “behavior champions”. This is different from the “change agents” of old – the behavior champions’ role is simply to embody the new behaviors, and also to promote them in the workplace by noting where they are or aren’t being embodied and correcting them one by one (e.g., in the way information is passed around the team, in the agenda for the weekly meeting, in the culture of last-minute emails, etc.)
- Viral spread: The behaviors, embodied and espoused by a few influential people around small workplace issues, will slowly spread virally – others will pick up the verbal and non-verbal cues, then begin to take them on because the behavior champions are people to be imitated.
- Tipping point: The behaviors will start to become so pervasive that eventually their take-up will accelerate, reach a tipping point, and topple over into “culture”. It won’t have been imposed from above, but you’ll have your very stable culture change.
- Aggregation: Once it’s been changed in one place, that can then be the launchpad for virally spreading the
culture further and wider through “behavioral phase transitions”.
This article is an edited extract from Melcrum's Viral communication in the workplace report.
Have your sayHave you experienced success with using the viral change method? What do you think of Herrero's findings? Do you agree that "change is most effective, permanent, deep and pervasive when it’s allowed to spread peer-to-peer, virally"? Share your thoughts on the topic with us below.
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