Over my years of learning, applying, and teaching systems thinking and dealing with transformative change, I'm continually confronted with fear and uncertainty. This is something that I regularly wrestle with myself and that I see in many, many others. I'm coming to the conclusion that it is fear, more than any other factor, holding us back from achieving our own true potentials and leading our organizations and communities forward.
So what do we fear? Well, there's lots of answers to that question but I want to focus on just a couple.
1) Fear comes from a lack of understanding. If I don't understand something, it appears to me as chaotic and complex. Chaos and complexity can often (but not always) be frightening. The financial world of stocks and bonds appears to me as chaotic and complex and it strikes fear in me when I'm asked to put my money into it. So I seek out people who aren't afraid of it - people, in short, who understand it much more deeply than I. To them, it is far less chaotic and complex. The more I learn about it, the less fear I have.
2) Fearing the consequences of acting over the consequences of not acting. I find this another powerful force. Even in situations where people can cognitively see that their current course of action is likely to lead to a slow but sure death and have some inkling of what a better future might look like, they choose slow death. Why? They hold out some strange hope that a miracle will happen and that their dire predictions will somehow not happen or not be as bad. Take schools and newspapers for example. Lots and lots of people see that continuing down their current paths of trying to improve upon what they've always done without making fundamental purpose and structural changes is akin to slowly bleeding to death. Yet, they choose to continue to try magic formulas and to improve the existing models in the hope that there is some sort of escape hatch that exists but they've yet to uncover. Why don't they move towards a transformation? Behind the seemingly rational arguments for not doing it is a deep-seated fear - the fear doing something different brings with it the very real possibility of accelerating their death. Given the choice of slow but certain death over fast but uncertain death, they choose the former. I think of the man several years ago who found himself pinned in a crevice of a glacier. After a period of time he realized that no one was likely to find him and that he was slowly dying. He was faced with two decisions: 1- stay there and do nothing and hope that by some magic he would be found in time or 2- sever his pinned arm which would either a) accelerate his death or b) allow him to escape and seek help. He choose #2. Unfortunately, too often, organizational and community leaders choose option 1- and it is purely a fear-based decision.
3) As my new friend Traci Fenton says, "the opposite of freedom is fear" and asks her power question: "What would you do if you weren't afraid?" Despite all our exhortations about freedom and holding it up as a fundamental organizing principle of our country, many of us are actually afraid of freedom. I watched the 1969 movie classic, Easy Rider again last weekend and the whole premise of the movie is about how most Americans, when confronted with people who are totally free, are afraid and try to destroy them. You see, true freedom means you have to be fully accountable for your feelings, thoughts, and actions. Quite frankly, I have to fight daily with my fear of this sort of freedom and often seek solace in the security of imprisonment - of thoughts, actions, and responsibility. But I find I hate imprisonment more and the trade-off isn't worth it, yet I still often find myself choosing imprisonment due to my fears. How do we help our organizations and the people in them to see their shackles and help them escape?
So, how can we confront fear and uncertainty? The first thing to do is to call it out when you see it. When do I see it? I see it most often when a new direction or idea is being proposed and it comes in the form of "yeah, but's". Objections and rationalization as to why it won't work, why it isn't the right time, why we must wait for others to "get where we are." In short, a bunch of bull.., horsehockey that masks people's fears. "We'll lose subscribers if we change that fast." "I don't want to be responsible if this thing blows up." "Parents won't let us do this." "We don't know enough yet about this to make this work." "We can't afford this change right now." "We don't have the time, let's get a, b, and c done first..." It goes on and on.
In short, people throw up the universal constraints of not enough time, money or expertise. Remind them that there is never enough time, money, or expertise. Also, don't allow gross exaggerations and irrational fear stop forward movement. When you hear one, ask a simple question: let's lay out the worst possible outcome of making this change - then talk about the factors and events that would have to transpire to make that happen. Usually, the combination of events are so unlikely that it becomes obvious that the worst-case scenario isn't very likely.
Finally - and this is why systems thinking focuses so heavily on problem formulation - we must help organizations understand that the thing to really be feared is extending the status quo into the future. As my friend and mentor, Jamshid Gharajedaghi says, "If you're bleeding to death, why would you purposefully choose to die slowly? If you're choosing death over life anyway, just get it over with!"
There's an interesting conversation going on over on