Three of my kids are learning how to ride a bike right now. Since my wife and I have already done this 7 times, we thought it would be easy. It has been 7 years since we have done it, but teaching someone to ride a bike should be the same as riding a bike. Once you do it, you never forget. So we lined our 5, 6 and 7 year olds up with their hand me down bikes from their older siblings and started their journey from little kids to big kids. We knew that these kids all have different personalities with some less coordinated than others, some are more fearful than others, and some are more stubborn than others. But we had years of experience teaching kids to ride bikes. We knew the routine, an hour of tears, some crashing, scrapes and bruises with Toy Story band-aids. My wife and I both played our roles. I would say, “Stop crying and get back on the bike.” “Everyone falls you just need to do it again.” And my wife with the, “I know it hurts, let me kiss it better”, “You did so good”, “You're ok, lets try again.” Both of us taking turns with the video camera and running behind them on their bikes.
You get the picture. We noticed a couple of things that were impeding my kids from just picking up the bike and riding it. They are what I call “barriers to riding.” Being the software engineer with an MBA, I need to have a buzz word or phrase to explain things. I will show a graph later with success in the upper right hand corner of the page. Funny thing is that I see similar things when it comes to engineers and teams evaluating and using new tools. In previous blogs, I have mentioned to find out what motivates people and how to play to those motivators. I have been reminded that we also have to look at “de-motivators” or “dissuadors”. Here are some of the things that dissuade trying out new tools or learning to ride a bike: fear, complexity and complacency.
Fear
Fear is one of the most powerful, “barriers to entry”, there are. Our society does not seem to help the situation. Look at kids learning to ride a bike. We completely cover them in helmets, knee pads, elbow pads, etc... We basically scare our kids and teach them to be afraid to ride a bike. We predisposition them that falling is going to hurt and may kill you. No wonder they are very scared to try and ride. We do the same thing in business. I don’t think if the new build system fails to build, will kill you, but we put the fear of trying and failing into annual performance reviews, development metrics, and tight release schedules.
After my kids all fell once or twice, they found out that it only hurts a little bit. They weren’t going to die. They got the comfort they needed from their mom, the motivation from their dad and they kept trying. We did not reward them for trying and quitting. We encouraged and adjusted our approach based on the results we had before. The key was showing them that it was safe to fall and encouragement to keep trying.
We need to foster the same kind of atmosphere in our work environments. Encourage people to try new things, learn new techniques and use tools. We need to be okay with failing and learning to eventually succeed. We need to make sure that we don’t reward failure. We cannot remove the natural consequences of failure. Like my kids, they had to fall a couple of times before they could figure out how to balance. When we fail we still need the sting of hitting the pavement and skinning our knee, or we won’t know we are headed in the wrong direction and we cannot correct the path we are on.
Complexity
Everyone that rides a bike knows that it is easy. It is not that complex. Tell that to a 5 year old, or an engineer that has only used vi or emacs and cannot see moving to a windows based IDE where they have to use their mouse to get things done. (I fit into that category). To ride a bike it requires balance, hand eye coordination to move the handle bars, strength to push the pedals, coordination to move your legs in a new motion, etc.... For a 5 or 6 year old this can be very hard to figure out. Throw fear in there and you have something monumental to overcome.
One of the tricks we learned was to break down complexity, remove some of the factors that make it complex. Whether it is holding on to the back of their seat, (removing balance), or removing the pedals, (removing the leg motion and strength requirements). This worked like a charm, and as they built up their confidence and coordination, they have progressed to riding their bikes all of the time. It has become second nature to them.
Same thing applies to adopting a new tool or process. Don’t do everything at once if it is too complex. It could be very difficult for an individual or organization to swallow all of the complexity at once. But remember, the end goal is to have the complete system in place. You need to put the pedals back on the bike to actually ride the bike. If you don’t, you can’t go as fast as everyone else riding their bike.
Complacency
My 5 year old told my wife and I that he can walk and that he does not need to ride a bike. Ok, this is actually true, but we had to show him the benefits or riding a bike compared to walking everywhere. First, so we can have fun with our friends; his response, “I can ride my scooter.” Second, we can get to places faster; his answer was to drive a car. Third, we can go places on our bikes that our cars cannot go; his creative juices were flowing now, “We can use super hero powers and fly there.”
We run into the same problem in our organizations that don’t want to change. It is comfortable and familiar in a world that seems to always change. Most people want something that is always the same. So what do you do? Fight complacency with a plan and develop a sense of urgency. In the case of my 5 year old, our plan was to ride a bike and show him all of the steps we were going to take to teach him. Then, we had to give him a sense of urgency. So we planned some family bike trips to the park. One of his favorite parks. The urgency was there and the plan was in place.
Organizations need the same kind of strategic plan and urgency that my 5 year old needed. Without an end goal and a timeline to meet the goal with some kind of consequence, the people on your team might wonder why they are making the change. “Change for change’s sake” will be the mantra for the week, and the effort will be undermined by complacency.
Results
When a substantial change is made in an organization, you need to celebrate. There needs to be a reward for the change. Many times we forget to point out to our teams the benefits that have been realized from making the change. Don’t forget to point out the natural consequences of the changes. Many people need to be reminded. A celebratory pizza party helps sometimes as well.
As of this date we have 2 new bike riders in our family. My 5 year old is still holding out, but this next week may be the week for him. Like I said. We learn from our failures not our successes. Anyway it may give me more ideas for another blog.
DWP
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