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Now that we’ve explored the three sets of sliders in a change process - Change vs. Accept It As It Is; Rapid vs. Gradual Change; and Creative Destruction vs. Creative Recombination - it’s time to put the concepts into practice. I thought a personal example would best illustrate how to do this, so I will use my experience with choosing to terminate my service with AmeriCorps.

Background
Immediately after completing my undergraduate degree, I joined the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps. This program is designed as 10 months of community service within the United States. The NCCC is modeled after the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps and when I was a member it was directed by a retired Army general. Our work was pretty varied, and during my service I provided disaster relief, tutored elementary school students, and gleaned spinach, among lots of other stuff.

I enjoyed the service work, but the structure of the program was quite military. All the Corps members were assigned to teams of 12-15 people, with one team leader. We lived together, worked together, and socialized together. Our rules of conduct were pretty strict. We had weekly living quarters inspections, there were many limits on drinking alcohol and dating other Corps members (these were widely ignored), and we had to wear a uniform that consisted of some very unflattering cargo pants and grey t-shirts.

Now, I’ve never been one for following orders, and I found the structure of the program quite restrictive. At the time I was 22 years old, had lived on my own for a few years, and knew how to take care of myself. I wasn’t very receptive to someone telling me how to make my bed or what to drink. Did I mention I got paid $75 a week and food stamps? And we had to travel everywhere in a 15 passenger Chevy van? After 4 or 5 months of that, I was pretty unhappy and began to seriously consider leaving.

Change vs. Accept It As It Is
For me the hardest point in the change process is deciding to make a change. I sat at that dreaded 5 for several weeks. Part of me wanted to honor my commitment to serve and do whatever good I was able to during the few months of service I had left. Another part of me was tired, stressed out and physically run down. I also had to opportunity to leave the Corps and almost immediately start a reasonably well paying job, which only increased my inner conflict.

I did everything I could think of to avoid making a decision. My friends received long, whiny phone calls and emails asking for advice. I made Pros & Cons lists. I took long walks and paced a lot.

Finally I made the leap and decided to leave. Once I was at a 10 it was time to start strategizing how to implement the change.

Rapid vs. Gradual Change
When I made my decision, my team was in the middle of a 6 week project. It just happened that the project would be finished just before Easter. While other people had suddenly quit and left the Corps (one guy left literally in the middle of the night), I didn’t want to be unfair to my teammates. I also needed to contact my future employer and make sure my job was still available.

I decided to be more gradual (I’d say a 4 on a 1-10 scale with 1 being slow as mud) in my approach. I told my teammates and the program directors that I would be leaving with plenty of notice. While many people tried to persuade me to stick around, my mind was made up. AmeriCorps has a lot of paper work involved with terminating service early, so I took care of all that. I got the oil changed in my car, packed up, and left on Good Friday.

I drove about 12 hours through pouring rain. When I was 30 miles from home, the sky cleared and a rainbow appeared over the highway. I felt better than I had in a looong time.

Creative Destruction vs. Creative Recombination
While my time in AmeriCorps was far from ideal, I took a lot of good away from my experiences. I could have quit the Corps, gotten a job making tons of money, and never helped anyone again. But I didn’t do that.

My community service experience really helped me solidify some values that had been half-formed already. Those values led me into a career that provides service in a less direct way (I don’t tear down drywall much anymore), but still stays true to my experiences. In a way, I guess I’ve recombined elements that were already within me to serve a new purpose.

Conclusion
As I hope my example illustrates, change is a process, not a single moment in time. There are many decision points in any change process - many more than the three steps I’ve outlined. Whether you are working at a personal level, or implementing change in a Fortune 500, it is important to be strategic in a change process and use the many options and tools available to reach the best possible outcome.

I welcome any examples of changes that anyone would like to share in the comments.

In my original Sliding Scales post I introduced the concepts of creative destruction and creative recombination. These terms come from Eric Abrahamson’s book Change Without Pain.

Creative destruction means that the change is huge, sweeping, and attempts to be a fresh start. At an organizational level a company might implement creative destruction by selling off a division or completely relocating operations to a new state. At a personal level, leaving the country and completely re-designing your lifestyle certainly qualifies as an 8 or 9.

Creative recombination, on the other hand, attempts to use systems and structures that are already in place to accomplish a new purpose. The changes are more gradual and less disruptive than creatively destructive change. Organizational creative recombination could include establishing cross-functional teams to pollinate ideas through their networks. Personal creative recombination could be as minor as using existing jobs skills in a new position.

Now that the definitions are set, how do we choose what setting on the 1-10 scale to employ? Here are 3 questions to ask:

Is there anything to recombine?
In a genuinely corrupt, degraded, or obsolete system, the raw materials needed for recombination might not be available. The less there is to work with and recombine, the more a situation calls for destruction and rebuilding. On a physical level I am reminded of a building I drive by everyday. Several months ago this old factory building was in the process of being renovated into housing. Sadly the building caught fire and burnt beyond the point of salvage. Now it is sitting, decaying and waiting to be bulldozed.

The same conditions can arise in an individual life or in an organization. In cities and departments that are rife with corruption, voters have been known the “throw the bums out” in hope of cleansing the system and starting again. Personal relationships can become so toxic that there is no reasonably choice other than moving on.

How much resistance is there to change?
In his book, Abrahamson believes that companies that have become change avoiders can benefit from large scale creative destruction. It may seem counterintuitive to recommend the most drastic change to those who resist it the most, but overwhelming the resistance may be the only way to make change take root. Attempting to recombine elements when those elements are digging in their heels to stop all progress is setting yourself up for failure.

Addicts provide a good example of people who vehemently resist change. In many cases of addiction, only a complete and sudden withdrawal - going “cold turkey” - can help the addict break the habit. On the other extreme, people interested in personal development often find that they can’t integrate sweeping change all at once. Rather, they slowly incorporate new habits and priorities into the framework of their existing lives. Over time, the change can be quite dramatic, but it is a very gradual process.

How fast is the change needed?
The existence of a genuine crisis plays a role here as well. Creative recombination takes time to make an impact. Destruction and reconstruction can be much quicker. In a company that is threatened by an agile and powerful new competitor, it may be necessary to completely reconfigure how business is done.

Because creative destruction can be difficult and painful, it shouldn’t be used lightly. Asking individuals or organizations to endure large scale change time and time again almost inevitably results in change fatigue. This fatigue will lead to resistance to change, which will necessitate even more radical changes.

Do you see the vicious circle here?

Change when needed, but keep enough stability so that the system doesn’t fall apart.

In the next post, I’ll conclude this series and provide an overview of the change process. If you have any experience with creative destruction or creative recombination, please share your stories in the comments.

No matter what level of change you are working at, there are many different approaches you can take. I like to think of the differences as being like the sliders on a stereo EQ control. When tweaking settings for sound, different types of music require different adjustments. Some music sounds best with the bass turned all the way up. Some sounds better when the mids are emphasized.

It is the same with change processes. For some situations, neither a 1 or a 10 is the best option. Instead, an optimal solution lies somewhere along the scale, or in some combination of several scales. For other situations, nothing but short of total commitment to one extreme will work.

There are many dualities to choose among when picking an approach to change, but I want to focus on three in particular. Each is defined below, but I will be devoting individual posts to each pair.

Change vs. Accept It As It Is
The first choice we all have to make is whether a situation should change at all. This may seem obvious, but in some situations it is easy to sit at a 5 and never make a choice at all. In future posts I’ll discuss some research that suggests that it doesn’t really matter what choice you make here, as long as you are committed to the choice and don’t second guess yourself.

Rapid vs. Gradual
After making the decision to change, the next choice is often how much time to devote to the change. In some situations, such as a crisis, extremely rapid change is the only viable option. Often, though, a moderate pace is appropriate.

Many factors go into determining an optimal pace for change. A short list includes: size of the change; amount of change prior to and after the change; and resistance to the change. The full range of the slider can be used on this one!

Creative Destruction vs. Recombination
I take these terms from Change Without Pain by Eric Abrahamson. Creative destruction is the idea of tearing everything down and starting from scratch. Recombination, as the term suggests, implies moving pieces of an existing structure around and creating as little disruption as possible. Huge, revolutionary change processes try to hit a 10 on the creative destruction scale. In the opposite paradigm, the Bottle House is an extreme example of recombination.

So now you know of three ways to tweak a change process. In future posts, I’ll go into more detail about each. In the meantime, please share your thoughts and experiences with dualities and change in the comments.