Building on our theme of ‘enhancing cultural change’, we wanted to share some information that we’ve found extremely useful in understanding change at both an individual and organisational level.

As you’ll read, knowing about the process of change is one thing, but actually using it to drive effective change is another thing altogether. We hope you find it interesting, and if you’d like further information, just reach out and let us know.

The learning and development of a new set of skills is something we have all experienced in our lives. Whether it has been acquiring the ability to walk and talk in our formative years or learning the complex dating rituals that dominate our adolescence and early adulthood, we have developed these skills over time until they have become a natural part of who we are – part of our habits.

The human brain loves habits. It seeks to turn all our behaviour into habits so that it can conserve its precious energy and be more efficient for us. This represents some big benefits, but also some big challenges for us as humans.

Ultimately, once we have developed a habit our brains do not like us to change it because change takes energy. So, when we embark on the development of a new skill set, we need to overcome the natural tendency of our brains to want to maintain the current state of play. To do this, we need to move through a set of steps known as the Stages of Change.

In 1977 two psychologists by the names of Prochaska and DiClemente developed the Transtheoretical Stages of Change model, to define the stages a person moves through as they acquire or change a behaviour. It was initially utilised as a framework for treating addiction (nicotine and other drugs), but has since been applied across settings and behaviours, and is acknowledged by psychologists as the standard in describing behavioural change. The model indicates that when a person changes, they progress through five distinct stages:

1. Pre-contemplation: they have not considered the need for change
2. Contemplation: they are weighing up the benefits of change against the costs
3. Preparation: they are acquiring the skills, knowledge, and resources to create the change
4. Action: they have commenced with the new behaviour
5. Maintenance: continuing the behaviour to the point of it becoming habitual

Quite often, when we look at skills acquisition or change, we fail to take people through the stages in a sequential manner, often jumping straight to action without preparing effectively for the change, and without any plans for how we maintain the new behaviour. When we do this, we fail to achieve sustainable change at a personal or group level.

Effective change processes take this into account and are mapped against the Stages of Change. They acknowledge that ‘knowing’ the skills is only one part of change, where ‘doing’ and ‘maintaining’ are other things entirely. To put this into context, consider someone trying to improve their fitness. At a basic level, it is very simple. Manage what you are putting into your body and engage in regular exercise and other healthy lifestyle choices. Yet despite the simplicity of behaviours required, we have an ever-increasing level of obesity and poor health in many global communities. The reality is that knowing how to stay fit does not change behaviour. Helping people to develop new habits does.

Within your organisation, consider the following:

• Do you help people to ‘contemplate’ the need for change, by exploring what is working well, what isn’t, and what’s possible?
• Do you provide the right training, resources and support to ‘prepare’ people for change, helping them to understand what is expected from them, and how they can do it?
• Do you encourage people to ‘action’ by acknowledging success along the way, pointing out and recognising when people have got it right?
• Do you assist them to learn when they don’t get it right, helping them to get back on track?
• Do you embed the change in your daily routines so that it can be ‘maintained’ for the long term, and not just a flash in the pan?
• Most importantly, do you review the change initiatives that have been rolled out in your organisation and whether they have been effective at supporting people through the stages of change?