Why being an agent of change isn't easy (or common)

I've had a couple of interesting conversations recently about the difficulty of getting people (and by extension, their organisations) to deal with the fundamental issues and ideas that underpin their day to day activities.

So often, when I try to have a conversation at that level it's dismissed as pedantry or triviality.

It's all very frustrating, but on reflection it's absolutely predictable in terms of transformative learning processes.

At the core of Transformative Learning Theory, is the process of "Perspective Transformation." Clark (1991), identifies three dimensions to a perspective transformation: psychological (changes in understanding of the self), convictional (revision of belief systems), and behavioral (changes in lifestyle) (in Mezirow, 2000).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformative_learning  [accessed 10 April 2010]

The energy and maturity of approach required to reflect critically on your own frame of reference (perspective) is significant. It requires a capacity to enter, more or less at will, that space where all things are simultaneously possible - where cognitive dissonance prevails; Schrodinger's cat can be simultaneously alive and dead. This is the land of the White Queen,who could believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast. It's also described as the "neutral zone" of transition; and the bottom of Scharmer's U of profound change:

...we move down one side of the U (connecting us to the world that is outside of our institutional bubble) to the bottom of the U (connecting us to the world that emerges from within) and up the other side of the U (bringing forth the new into the world). On that journey, at the bottom of the U, lies an inner gate that requires us to drop everything that isn't essential. This process of letting-go (of our old ego and self) and letting-come (our highest future possibility: our Self) establishes a subtle connection to a deeper source of knowing.

http://www.presencing.com/presencing-theoryu/summaries.shtml [accessed 10 April 2010]

The U metaphor illustrates why this process takes so much mental energy: in order to enter that 'neutral' space where real ("profound") change  - i.e. a perspective transformation - is possible, it is necessary to abandon all forward momentum. In order to exit from it, it is necessary to create a new direction and movement from scratch. As anyone with even a passing understanding of basic physics knows, both of these processes absorb energy. Think for a moment of how much fuel is required to stop a tanker on the ocean, or turn it. It's not just a matter of not accelerating, engine power is needed to brake, or to push in the new direction. The same is true with our movement through life.

None of which is going to make it any less frustrating for an agent of change, an innovator or an early adopter dealing with people who are not able to do this; but perhaps it may make it easier to accept that it's just how it is. Everett Rogers' Diffusion of Innovation theory where those terms come from, suggests that 1 person in 40 (2.5% of the population) is an 'innovator' and about 1 in 8 (13.5% of the population) is an early adopter (also known as opinion leaders or lighthouse customers).

All of which ties in quite neatly with this article in CLO Magazine about Ambiguity Leadership and the art of mastering uncertainty.