Capitalizing on the Change Curve

by Paradigm Associates LLC

Imagine that there was a relatively simple tool that could help you understand and predict how members of your team and organization would likely perform over a period of time. You may already know it as the universal change curve or the forming, storming, norming, and performing curve, which is a variation on the work of B.W. Tuckman that originally appeared in 1965.

Our thoughts and approach have been helpful to many organizations as they are faced with opportunities that require parts of organizations to adapt and change.

We have been referring to it as the “universal change curve” because any time any facet of a team is changed, the team seems to go through a predictable behavior pattern.

The curve we are talking about looks somewhat like this.

What makes this so interesting to us is that it doesn’t seem to matter whether someone is adding team members, subtracting team members, or replacing team members, the overall pattern still holds.
While everyone desires to be on the dotted line curve above when a change is made, it typically doesn’t happen that way.

When a change is made, there is usually some euphoria among team members, which increases the energy level and initial results. Then, as the reality of the situation kicks in and the magnitude of the needed change becomes better understood, they discover there is, “No such thing as a free lunch”. It is no longer disguised. It is going to take real work to make it. When going through the storming phase, usually the results will get worse and the group’s energy level will fall before they get better. The most common adage is that, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs”, so this is a critical juncture for the organization.

If we look at this as a model for the implementation of a typical organization’s strategic plan, it has some interesting ramifications. If poor or incomplete planning has taken place, the results going forward can look like this.

It is at this lower results point that executives may feel compelled to bail out. You’ll hear people saying, “This is crazy. You know what we need? We need a new plan.”

The challenge is that if they do that, the universal change curve kicks in again, and now they can go even lower. As demonstrated below, it is though they are shifting the Y-axis to the right and starting over through the process. It gets repeated with devastating results.

We share this because it is not always understood what the real ramifications are of having a weak strategic planning process, or weak implementation plan. We have found that the “devil really is in the details”, and many executives and business owners don’t seem to want to take the time to do it “right the first time”. Their philosophy seems to be, “if this doesn’t work, we’ll just come up with a different plan”. When you see the second or third graphic above, you can see that the dollars and cents impact can be huge while operating by trial and error. When you see the first graphic above, the upside of having an appropriate strategy with the appropriate level of detail that can be successfully executable is huge.

The same conclusions can be reached when putting organizations and project teams together. False starts can cause organizations to experience larger cash drains and higher customer defection rates than many may realize. Wonderfully effective teams can be worth their weight in gold, so whenever possible, don’t be too quick in the selection of team members and formation of teams. Let’s maximize the opportunities we have available.