Innovating in a Change-Averse Culture

Optimizers and innovators speak two different languages.  Optimizers speak the language of reliability, and use terms that emphasize the importance of consistency with past practices, whereas innovators speak the language of validity, and use terms that emphasize the potential of future practices.   As a result, they fail to understand one another  and this misunderstanding leads to disagreements when, in reality, they may actually agree.

Learning to speak another person’s language means changing your behavior to accommodate them, or at the very least listening with an open mind and attempting to understand rather than rectify their perspective.  Optimizers are inherently opposed to changing their behavior, are entrenched in their beliefs, and cannot be expected to learn the language of the innovator.   And so, an innovator must learn to speak the language of the optimizer, and should be more open to doing so because he is characterized by a willingness to change and accommodate.

The key to communicating with optimizers is in understanding that their motivation is based on fear:  they immediately fear anything that is unfamiliar and will not put much effort into attempting to understand it.  As a result the typical conversational pattern of the optimizer is nay-saying: they point out the problems with a proposal and have no suggestion of how to solve them.  

And so, the proposal of any change must begin in the context that is familiar, before considering improvements or deviations from current practices. One excellent tool is analogy: to describe an unknown concept in terms of something that is already known.   The innovator will acknowledge that he understands what is presently being done and why things are thus before suggesting a change, and then emphasizing the way in which the new method will still do the things that the old one does.   This helps the optimizer to overcome his resistance to the changes.

It is a serious mistake to attempt to enlighten them – nothing new can be proposed except in context of what is already known.   One must pay homage to the old ways, consider that the optimizer views any change to the status quo to be a threat to his comfortable routine.  He cannot be sold on dramatic changes, but may be titrated to minor changes if they are presented as improvements or enhancements on the current ways.

In this way, radical changes can be introduced slowly, and it will take many years to get done what might have been accomplished in a few months – but so long as the optimizer is in a position to prevent change, it would be impossible to accomplish the goal in any amount of time.   So it is a slower and less efficient approach to innovation, but it may be the only route to evolution when working within a change-averse culture.