Cultural
Studies & Analysis principals Margaret King and Jamie O’Boyle field his
expert questions on change—as a cultural concept. Hear the entire September 2020 power-point interview
at
https://1drv.ms/v/s!AndfYpyVsX3z2QpXKH9h9v9MHoWJ. Here is a summary of the high points.
1. What is CS&A, and what does it do? –
Our research group tracks and studies group choices over time to identify
consistent patterns of behavior that reveal how people think, make decisions,
and act--to find value in products, services, concepts, and ideas.
2. Why study behavior rather than just ask people
what they want? - Because people cannot
tell you what they want with any degree of accuracy, but those same people
recognize what they want when they see it with 100% accuracy. So what people tell you they want is
unverified testimony. It’s basically a guess. If something better comes along,
then everything changes. But since they don’t know that something better exists
until they see it, they can’t tell you about it in advance. The buy decisions
are made below our conscious horizon. Then our brain invents a story to
validate that decision. So what people habitually do becomes reliable evidence
of underlying beliefs that drive our decisions. Without examining the evidence
of consistent patterns of behavior to compare to the verbal testimony, you are
working without the critical information to make informed strategy, planning,
and tactical decisions.
3.
You say “what people habitually do,” but what
happens when the context or the environment changes? What happens when circumstances change? Don’t
people intuitively resist change? -
People change all the time – we grow and age, for instance, and our wants and
needs change with that process. What we have problems with are sudden changes,
and even more so, changes that are forced upon us. That’s why change management
is so important. Change managers are like guides who lead expeditions through unknown
territory. They may never have been in that particular wilderness before, but
they know how to survive in the wilderness in principle – they know what a
pitfall looks like. They know what a
safe haven looks like. They know what resources like water look like. It may be
a rough slog, but they’ll get you through it.
4. What is change in terms of culture? - It’s the main mechanism by which culture
occurs, by adjusting to changed circumstances, evolving alongside new needs,
altering our reality by means of new visions of the present and future. Cultural change is a constant, either fast
or slow, and in fact is what creates culture.
That makes it hard to study; it doesn’t stand still for anyone.
5. What does that say about human activity at
any one time? - We spend a lot of our
time and attention on “adaptation energy,“ adapting everything we do to
changing conditions, even micro-changes like who’s at home and who’s not,
travel, study, socialization. Where we
put our attention is dictated quite a lot by what is going to happen tonight,
tomorrow, next week, next year, and so on. We don’t do nearly as much long-term
thinking because things might change, and (our attitude says) then all that
long-term planning will be for nothing.
6. What do you do with this kind of
knowledge? - Understand what the human
cultural motivators are that are driving our collective thinking, values, and
behaviors. We’re in a forced state of
change now, which makes it harder to predict or plan what we’re doing – no one
even knows six months out how the pandemic will shake out in all fields of
endeavor beyond health – the economy, foreign relations, education,
entertainment, work, and recreation.
Nothing is going to return to pre-COVID normal.
7. Can you give an example of this ongoing crisis mode, our brains
on sudden and anxious change? – The question is; how do we get through this event –
working with depression, anxiety, apprehension, uncertainty. Especially uncertainty. Our brains don’t like it. We can’t plan. It’s mental and emotional limbo. Without a time frame we can count on, our
accustomed sense of what’s real suffers week after week as the timeline
stretches out indefinitely. We can deal
with continuous, steady change. We can’t
deal well with change that is sudden, discontinuous, unconnected and
unexpected. Uncertainty sounds like the main problem we have
with change. – It is, because if we
can’t chart forward movement, therefore how do we identify opportunity in
what’s going on now to survive and thrive?
How will my social resources change? These are “CIS” questions – “Can I Still--”
(do X)? What we need are
intelligible ways of connecting our past and present to our sense of what kind
of future we need to start living--now.
8. What are we able to be certain of, then? - Lots of things, how we develop from child
to adult – we see this as progress which is welcome, expected, and
planned-for. It’s evolution. Even aging has a gradual, expected character
– which we know how to deal with because it is so familiar and incremental. We are all adapting to our life stages ---
except for middle-age crisis, which does throw people, because it isn’t consciously
planned-for behavior. It’s about our subconscious comparing where we are to
where we expected to be. Our brain does this in about twenty-year cycles. If we
are pretty much where we expected to be, no problem. If there is a disconnect
between where we expected to be and where we are, this is the set-up for a
mid-life crisis.
9.
What is our problem with change, then? – As
humans, we view changes – even positive changes – in terms of their potential
for loss, not gain. We always look at new ventures first in terms of what we
have to lose – it’s called loss aversion and we all have it to varying degrees.
Starting a business is risk-loaded, and
many people aren’t prepared for what’s required to be an entrepreneur, and
incorrectly think that if they are innovators, they can also run the show. Role confusion is part of anticipating things
as they are going to develop because we also exaggerate our own sense of
competence around new circumstances.
10.
What’s an example for business? - When a business moves, or merges, or mounts
a major initiative, they may think it’s enough to mandate change. It rarely is. This is because change is not
just a move or merger or new software – it’s a human dynamic, running on human
factors, like loss aversion. Loss of
status, loss of a role or even a job, and the one humans really hate-- loss of
competence. That’s a function of being out of touch with things (as in the
current crisis) because it isn’t clear what the new rules are, or how people
relate to each other under those rules.
That’s why change management is such an important discipline, and it
goes far beyond the processes or technology of a new operating system. People need to reexamine an entire range of
things to pay closer attention to, re-assess, and re-evaluate. But they must be able to understand any
detail in terms of the big picture, which means new themes and demands.
11.
This is the reason we are adaptable as a
species? - Yes, and that adaptability
has to be more than individual – it must include strategies we can deploy in
groups with a changed reward system under new ways of getting things done. It’s called AQ (Adaptability Quotient), but
it goes beyond your abilities or mine to be flexible and take risks for the
future. It requires a skill set that
must be internalized, shared, and managed as an effective new thinking style.
12.
What’s
the current big question about change? We
think it is this: “Can we think about
the future while at the same time undergoing unexpected broadband change in the
present?” That’s the current challenge –
it’s difficult to think about getting through school, promoting your career,
even just doing the work you are used to doing, while at the same time having a
vague, but unsettled, speculative idea to imagine what the world is going to be
like even a few months away.
