Achieving change

We've been discussing several radical policy changes recently at Bluefruit. One of these is the possibility of getting rid of Annual Leave altogether and encouraging people to take more responsibility for finding the right time to take a holiday. This idea in itself is worthy of a blog post (or a book...)

On a highly related note, a regular discussion theme we have with people who come to us with product ideas they would like help with, is about the conflict between the value of having a system which people are familiar with (due to previous incarnations of it) and a system which is more innovative (and therefore less familiar).

I spent some time articulating this for a few of our customers this week, and realised that it's something worth sharing.

There are several stages to achieving change. To move from one stage to the next requires investment to overcome a unique "energy barrier", the nature of which depends very much on what you are trying to change and how quickly and radically you are trying to change it.

1. Existing doctrine
The concept to overcome here is that "it is the way it is because that's the way we do it...". That doesn't mean ignoring the positive aspects of the way it is in our attempts to innovate, simply that the fact of it being a certain way is not good rationale for it remaining that way.
 
2. Theoretical acceptance of change
Once it's been agreed that change is worthwhile, a new proposal has to be made which is theoretically accepted (not only by customers, but also management and engineers, in the case of Bluefruit Software).
 
3. Practical acceptance of change
Ah, the move from the theoretical to the practical! Not to be undestimated... I wouldn't say it is easier to accept theoretical change than practical. In some ways, and again depending on the exact context, it's much easier to accept something practically because you get to experience the change and decide on whether it's positive or not.

4. New doctrine
Once everyone has accepted that the change works on a theoretical and practical level, it is still necessary for that change to become the new "doctrine". A really great idea can be borne out practically and then completely ignored by everyone who should be adopting it.

(and repeat... if you're lucky!)

Sometimes the energy barriers involved in achieving new doctrine are simply not worth overcoming due to the energy investment required, but more often it's a matter of approach.


Some of the energy barriers involved :

- Familiarity
- Time
- Cost
- Information "battle"
- Regulation

If change can be experimented with in bite-size chunks, it helps a lot, because you're moving less change through the process. If we imagine for a moment that "change" is something physical and the energy barriers involved are related to mass and physics, it is very easy to visualise what's happening when we "push through" innovative changes.

This is one of the huge advantages of Agile, as it reduces the cost of change by placing more emphasis on practical experiment, and also relies on stakeholders being integrated with the process.

Always interested in discussing this if anyone is keen!

Thanks