Which side of the road do Swedes drive on?

For decades, Swedes were left-side drivers in the same way as the Brits or Aussies.  Because of increased accidents and drags on the economy, in the late 1960’s the nation decided to join the rest of continental Europe and move to the right side of the road.  Simple decision, right?  (Sorry for the pun)

Maybe the decision was simple, but the execution was not.

At the time, Sweden had around 8 million citizens.  That’s a lot of people with decades of driving habits that had to be broken.  Even more challenging though was the infrastructure.  All of Sweden was designed for left-side driving: the traffic signs, the lines on the roads, the traffic lights, the doors on public buses, and every other aspect of traffic infrastructure.

The shift to right-side driving was a change that necessitated total and immediate compliance.  Otherwise, there’d be a lot horn honking, finger pointing, and extremely dangerous driving conditions.  Any confusion could be deadly.

While the plan took months to execute, it also involved a singular switch over.  On Sunday, September 3, 1967 Sweden banned all traffic.  With the roads clear, municipal workers and military personnel went to work switching over some 360,000 traffic signs.  Only after hundreds of work crews from all over the nation telephoned in and reported that they were finished with their part of the changeover did the nation sound the notice allowing drivers to return to the streets.

If you’ve ever been part of a major organizational or institutional change, you know that real change has two aspects.  First, there are hours, weeks and sometimes months of headaches as you prepare for the change.  This is the behind-the-scenes aspect of change and while it can be excruciatingly burdensome, it’s also totally necessary.  Second, there is the moment-in-time aspect of change when the switch to the new way is made official.  This is the big moment when all of the planning comes to fruition and there’s no turning back.

If you lead change (or coach leaders who lead change), then you need to address both aspects of change.  Failing to appropriately combine the behind-the-scenes and moment-in-time aspects will lead to one of three poor approaches to change, each of which brings its own negative consequences.

Crash.  Change that occurs too immediately results in a crash.  Like a car that changes direction or speed too suddenly, an organization that changes abruptly can give everyone whiplash.  People don’t do well with surprises that seem to come out of nowhere.  Sudden shifts leave us feeling disoriented, fearful, and disengaged.  When you don’t provide enough planning and preparing, you risk causing a crash.  I once coached a hospital exec whose ownership suddenly forced massive changes throughout the system of hospitals and clinics.  The exec said he felt paralyzed because he wasn’t sure when the ground would shift beneath his feet again.  Crashes can leave people paralyzed.

Perpetual Incubation.  When the behind-the-scenes aspect of change gets overdone, the change never really properly manifests.  This can be such a slow, gradual, glacial kind of change that makes real change appear to be just around the next corner – except you’re moving in a big circle without any noticeable corners.  While this approach might seem to be a way to help people adjust to the change by taking it slowly, it actually creates three problems.  First, it draws out the process so long that people feel long-term tension and stress of being in perpetual change.  Second, this approach results in confusion as both the old and the new realities co-exist and people aren’t sure which way to do things.  Third, this approach is so slow that by the time any significant changes are made the context has shifted enough to warrant those changes meaningless or even negative.  I once worked for a denomination that “loved” change so much that they were always doing it – except that we never passed any mile markers or changed anything of any substance.  If the Swedes had taken this approach, they would have allowed anyone to drive on whichever side of the road they wanted until everyone just coalesced on doing it the new way.

Utopian Stagnation.  Another poor approach to change occurs when a successful change becomes the enemy of any future change.  Sometimes an organization gets so enamored with a recent change that they fail to recognize the need to start planning for the next change.  It’s as if everyone thinks that the recent change must have solved every possible problem, otherwise it wasn’t a success.  But heaven doesn’t descend just because you got change right.  Organizations change because contexts change, so smart organizations embrace change, celebrate victories, then start the behind-the-scenes work of preparing for another change.

As a coach, you work with people who need to create change.  You can support their change efforts by helping them exercise greater intentionality in combining the behind-the-scenes aspects of change and the moment-in-time aspects.  When you do, their change efforts will be far more successful.