How Curiosity Fosters Sustainable Change

Kurt Lewin, the late social psychologist said that if you want to understand how a system really works, try to change it. His point was that you don’t really know how groups or organizations work until you try to change them. As you create change, you learn all sorts of things that weren’t obvious to you before.

My corollary is, “if you want to change a system, you really need to understand how it works.” Many of us are responsible for creating change in our organizations. And we get frustrated when the change doesn’t occur as we expect it should or as fast as we expect it should.

One factor that limits our ability to create change is our reduced curiosity.

We’re often so intent on creating change, that we’re not curious about the steps that need to occur to create and sustain the change or what potential barriers we need to address. When others raise concerns about the challenge of creating the change, we put our curiosity aside and label them “resistant to change.”

What has always bothered me about the label “resistant to change” is that I have rarely met people who have identified themselves that way. Resistant to change is a label we often use to describe the motivation of others who are getting in the way of changes we want. If you are thinking, but some people are resistant to change, Roger, you are correct. It’s true that some people are more open to new experiences than others; this is partly a function of personality. Still, we contribute to resistance when we stop being curious and simply seek to convince others that our views are the right ones.

When we are curious, we learn.

We learn how a proposed change may create problems for others. We learn about the needs other people have that are important to meet in the change process. This, in turn, helps us learn how we might structure the change so that it gets better, more sustainable results.

Next time you are trying to create change, try getting and staying curious. Here are some questions you might ask:

• What are your reactions to what I’m proposing?
• What about the proposed change works for you?
• How, if at all, might the proposed change create problems?
• What do you think I might not be understanding about the change or how it will have an effect on other things in the organization?
• How would you complete this sentence: No matter how we implement the change, it needs to be done in a way that . . .? What is it about doing it in that way that is important to you?

For your questions to really generate learning, you need to be open to considering and further exploring the answers you receive. If you are mentally dismissing the answers as people are giving them, they will realize that you are not interested in learning. However, if you are genuinely curious, you will learn things that will help you and others plan and implement the change more effectively.

One more suggestion: start small. Start being curious about small changes you want to create. There will be less at risk for you, it will be easier for you to practice, and it is likely to build your confidence.

Originally published July 2009