Last Friday, i met with a fascinating guy named Luc de Brabandere. His book, The Forgotten Half of Change, was a FC Readers' Choice selection in April. A witty Belgian who ran the Belgian stock exchange until he had a midlife crisis and decided his life should be devoted to the study of creativity, he is now a partner at BCG's Paris office, where he travels the world. teaching executives how to, well, change.
Probably the most interesting takeaway was de Brabandere's notion that to change, you have to change twice (insert ze very French accent here). Borrowed from a group of psychologists in the 1950s known as the Palo Alto school, the concept is that in order to change reality, you must first change perception. For example, if you are chronically late, you can change reality by, say, allowing more time between meetings or getting a Palm Pilot. But that change is doomed to fail, says de Brabandere, because you are changing your actions without fundamentally desiring to see yourself as a new person--a person who is on time. Only when you change the perception you have of both punctuality and of yourself can this change stick. Reactions?
Related Stories: | Topics:Innovation, innovation + creativity, Luc de Brabandere, Paris, Palo Alto, Palm Pilot |
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Recent Comments | 4 Total
April 6, 2005 at 4:00pm by Peter Rees
It's great. I liked it when Gandhi said, "We must become the change we want to see".
April 6, 2005 at 10:30pm by Jennifer Warwick
Very cool, with or without the accent :-). In executive coaching, we often explore the distinction between affecting change by *doing things differently* vs. affecting change by *being different.* What you do is important...but who you are being while you're doing it is even more important.
April 7, 2005 at 11:52am by Xinbo Kan
This is so very true. This is also a central theme of Stephen Covey's best-selling book (although an old one) - the 7 habits of highly effective people. The question is: how do you change perception? You really need to start at the core, for a person or an organization, and work your way out.
April 7, 2005 at 2:08pm by David Facer
During a meeting with a very successful client today, I overheard myself ask perhaps the most potent question I have ever posed.
The question followed fifteen minutes of detail about his colleague's ethical shortcomings. The result for my client was an almost paralyzing sense of frustration.
The question I asked made no assumptions. It pushed in no direction. It pulled no strings. It flew, arrowlike, straight to the heart of desire.
"Do you want to stop being frustrated?" I asked.
I used to assume people want to stop being angry, betrayed, afraid, right, alone, frustrated, overworked, late, merely good, stressed-out, lied to, undervalued, confused. Despite investing substantial money to work with me, this is not always the case.
"I'm not sure," he said.
I thought, ah...now we can get somewhere. Why? Because, to his credit, he told the truth...and that is the only place from which success is built - the only place.
How about you? What do you want?
Using the example cited, does the guy really WANT to be on time? Perhaps he merely sees that he needs to be on time.
Internal wants trump external needs all the time...even when the wants cause problems. Behavior changes, as they are often acted out, lack a root of inner motivation to be different than before.
Many people simply do not want to change that much.