Five of the most dangerous words to come out of a business leaders mouth. “That will never work here”.
In a fantastic recent article, the organisational psychologist Adam Grant cited one reason for resistance to change as ‘Organisational uniqueness bias’.
“In plenty of workplaces, leaders are so focused on what makes their industry or culture different from others, that they overlook all the ways it’s similar to others”.
But why the false propensity for some individuals to view their organisation as so different, that well established, well researched and empirically demonstrated strategies simply can’t work there?
A possible lens to view this kind of thinking through is that of the ‘fixed mindset’. Coined by Carol Dweck in her book ‘Mindset’, it can be understood as the belief that basic qualities, like intelligence or talent, are fixed traits.
While usually thought of from the perspective of the individual, when said individuals are acting as agents of an organisation, especially wielding decision making power and influence over the attitudes of others, this kind of thinking can quickly spread to the collective.
This is a powerful force of inertia. This is a dangerous pattern which can ultimately stunt growth.
However, all is not lost.
In the long term, skilful coaching and leadership development can help to shift these kinds of pervasive attitudes. More immediately though, some simple precision questioning and reframing can help you start cultivating a growth mindset around new initiatives.
- How do you know that to be true?
- How many ways have been tried to make something like this work?
- What lessons can we take from similar initiatives to give this a better chance of succeeding?
- What was the last new initiative that succeeded? Why did that work?
- What would need to be different for this to succeed?
- What could we learn from trying regardless?
- How can we test that?
Let’s turn “that will never work here” to “how do we test that”.