Easy Change vs. Hard Change

I have a client who once called me an agent of change.

I think and talk about my work being transformative, so I guess "agent of change" fits, doesn't it?

I remember when I was a teenager and learned — and tried to integrate — that change is the only constant in life. Accepting transitions and change was hard for me as an undiagnosed autistic young person. To be honest, they're still hard for me in my personal life. At the time, I made it a rule: “Change is the only constant.” Because a rule is a rule. You can’t argue with a rule; you just have to live with it.

As I embarked on having a career, this rule served me well as I started developing an identity as a “hole poker.” I’ve never accepted doing things “because that’s how we’ve always done it.” My brain wants things to make sense, and doing something because you do it does not make sense to me if it’s not effective and efficient.

So while change can still be hard for me personally, I fully embrace and champion the importance of change at work. Not only is change the only constant, change is mandatory and essential for survival, especially in the fast-paced technological landscape of today. And a desire to change is ultimately why my clients hire me, even if they don’t think of it that way.

Think about why people buy: we want something painful to stop, something difficult to become easier, something good to turn into something great. Human beings make purchasing decisions because they want something to change. There is an inherent change occurring in all transactions and relationships.

My first business was a product business, and while I’m grateful I had that experience, I love selling services so much more. Services have the ability to create long-lasting, transformative change, and to impact innumerable people along the way. Lately, I've been thinking about how some change is easier than other change, and I've been reflecting on the kind of change I want to be a part of as a consultant and coach.

When a Client Needs a Change

Take coaching clients, for example. Some people come to me wrung out and burned out, and they know that something needs to change if they're going to survive their careers. Some of them are very early in their careers when they feel this way.

There are so many factors at play: Nonprofit people are driven to help others, which means we often put the mission or the people we serve before ourselves. We frequently experience vocational awe, believing that our work is so noble that we must do it at all costs — even if the cost is to ourselves. And as I’ve observed and experienced firsthand, many of us didn’t have healthy boundaries and interpersonal relationships modeled when we were growing up, so we when we end up in these cultures built around self-sacrifice and martyrdom, there is something enticing and intoxicating about operating this way, even if it’s toxic to us at the same time.

Sometimes people come to me, and they’ve lost themselves. Often, they feel like their jobs have cost them everything, and they’re looking for a way out of the nonprofit sector entirely. And these folks are often the very people the sector can’t afford to lose. So what can we do? What can they do to make this work more sustainable for themselves?

They need to experience transformative change. Or as Michael Bungay Stanier puts it, they need to experience hard change.

What is Hard Change?

Before we talk about hard change, we need to define easy change so we can see the distinction. Michael Bungay Stanier coined these terms in The Advice Trap: Be Humble, Stay Curious and Change the Way you Lead Forever.

"Easy change" is additive - it's when you add a tool, technique, process, or piece of knowledge to what you're already doing. The underlying way you think and operate stays the same. An example of easy change is implementing a new software program. These changes are relatively straightforward because they don’t require you to be different, just to do something differently.

On the other hand, "hard change" is transformative. It's when you must change your habits, beliefs, identity, relationships, or default ways of operating. Hard change is like implementing a new operating system, not just a new app in an existing system. Hard change requires that we first be open to changing who we are and how we show up. For hard change to occur, we need to fundamentally change our mindset and behavior in a lasting way.

Why is Hard Change Needed?

Because clients come to me when they’re seeking a transformation, I find myself repeating the refrain, “what got us here won't get us there,” à la 10x Is Easier Than 2x: How World-Class Entrepreneurs Achieve More by Doing Less by Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan. In other words (by Brené Brown), “Success over time almost always dismantles the environment that created the success.”

My clients don’t want to get incrementally better. They don’t want to make slightly more money or have somewhat greater impact. They want to — and often need to — change something fundamentally if they’re going to survive. Sometimes, like with coaching clients, survival feels literal — human. Other times, like with consulting clients, survival is about organizational sustainability.

In any case, the change that needs to happen is fundamental, not incremental. Alas, many organizations think capacity building is an easy change scenario that can be solved with a new policy, by adding another staff role, or by purchasing the right software. However, the work that I do when clarifying roles, changing decision-making processes, creating accountability, and shifting culture is actually hard change. It’s not just adding infrastructure; it’s changing how people relate to and work with each other — it’s making it possible for people to use the infrastructure effectively.

Personal Change Underlies Professional Transformation

You may be wondering how the examples I’ve chosen are related. What happens in individual coaching versus institutional consulting projects can feel like very different work — and it is! However, there is always work underneath the presenting pain points, which can be anything from needing to improve an individual’s time management to preparing an organization to double in size, and that work is almost always personal.

Personal development underlies and enables professional development.

To put a finer point on it, professional development is not possible without personal development.

In a hard change scenario, if something is going to change in the work environment, whether for an individual or an entire organization, the people in that environment must change first. This is why I have a people-centered approach and ethos in all the work that I do. My core belief about work is that people do well when they are well, which often runs counter to cultures that reward burnout as proof of commitment.

The fact is that organizations work better when they keep people at the center. In business planning, strategic planning, and people operations, if people are not centered, the work they do will not be implemented and integrated effectively. The people in an organization are not incidental to the work; they are what power the organization.

It makes sense that in every scenario in which an organization needs to change, the people who power that organization need to change with it — and often before it.

So what does this mean for me as an agent of change?

It means that while I may be hired to solve operational challenges, strengthen strategy, or build people infrastructure, the real work is helping people become the leaders their organizations need them to be. Because lasting organizational change doesn't happen when systems change. It happens when people do.