Change: "can't see" and "turn a blind eye"
1967, the American psychologist Martin Seligman made a classic experiment with dogs. He locked the dogs in a cage. As soon as the buzzer sounded, he gave them an uncomfortable electric shock. The dogs could not escape the electric shock because they were locked in the cage. After many experiments, as soon as the buzzer rings, open the cage door before giving the electric shock. At this time, the dog not only does not escape, but also falls to the ground before the electric shock. He begins to moan and tremble. He could have taken the initiative to escape but desperately waits for the pain. Seligman called this phenomenon "learnedhelplessness"
many subsequent experiments have also proved that this "learned helplessness" phenomenon can also occur in people. The concentration camps in Nazi Germany during World War II provided a cruel natural experiment site for us to understand the phenomenon of human "learned helplessness": when the Red Army of the Soviet Union broke the prison door of the concentration camp, they did not see the imagined scene of Jews in the prison cheering at them. There is an unbelievable calm in front of us. These people in the concentration camp have seen too many killings caused by trying to escape from prison (they can only see them. Those who have tried to escape from prison have no chance to recall the consequences). They have long lost hope for survival and even lost the motivation to find even a trace of vitality. Seligman won the lifetime achievement award of the American Society of applied and Preventive Psychology for his outstanding research on "learned helplessness" and related fields, and was elected president of the American Psychological Society in 1998
"learned helplessness" reflects people's indifference to difficulties and opportunities. It will make people lose their desire and motivation to analyze the current difficulties and seek solutions because of past helplessness. Therefore, its evil result is that this distorted cognition will turn imagined helplessness into failure in reality, which in turn strengthens this distorted cognition
unfortunately, the "learned helplessness" does not only exist in this extreme situation, it is around us! Congenital diseases, decreased academic performance, failure in entrance examinations, the shock of lovelorn relationships, broken relationships between husband and wife, work mistakes or layoffs, bad interpersonal relationships, loneliness in old age, infirmity and even incurable diseases are all the sources of "learned helplessness". Don't we often hear people say "I'm broken", "I have no hope", "I know, but there's no way..."—— These are signals of "learned helplessness"
in fact, it's more than that
in recent years, "change" seems to have become the most fashionable term. It is spoken of by too many people every day, such as enterprise managers, university professors, and countless consulting and training companies in the market, so that "change" almost becomes a cliche. Everyone, from the top decision-maker of the organization to a fledgling job-hunting graduate, hopes to shape himself into a fanatical innovator and show himself as a "innovator", so as to make himself look more in line with the trend. Indeed, the growth process of an organization, whether it is an enterprise organization or a government organization, whether it is a profit-making organization or a non-profit organization, from small to large, from weak to strong, in a sense, is a continuous process of change, ranging from the adjustment of organizational strategy or the reconstruction of corporate culture, to the improvement of a certain process or the innovation of a processing technology
however, how difficult it is to change the organization! Change means breaking the old order and establishing a new one; Change means that the "vested interests" of some people or groups will be re divided; The change means that Chinese plastic machinery enterprises have repeatedly expanded their opening up of emerging markets for extruders to adapt to a new organizational habit. It even means that some people have to become people who are no longer needed by the organization, and so on. Therefore, although organizational change is a general trend and an inevitable conclusion (the external market environment is changing, customers are changing, and competitors are also changing. If the organization cannot change all this, it has only one choice - to change itself). However, due to the above-mentioned reasons, this process is also doomed to be a process full of difficulties and obstacles! In a sense, it is precisely because organizational change is so difficult that an industry such as management consulting can be created. Despite the help of external consulting experts, the success rate of change behavior in all areas of the enterprise is still so low. Human resource management consulting is a mature field among many management consulting. However, according to statistics, the actual success rate of project implementation is still less than 50%
organizational change is so difficult that too many people have experienced or witnessed the failure of change, which often leads to the "learned helplessness" of change - unfortunately, we find that there is no great difference between people and animals in this point! Organizational change is so difficult that only real innovators can really carry on the change - it is also a pity that, as Welch told us, in his opinion, the real innovators are no more than 10%, while the other 90% are pseudo innovators! Therefore, what we hear more are such words as "don't bother, there is no way", "we have tried, and we can't solve it", "we have never been able to solve this problem, and there is no way"“ ×× We are a state-owned enterprise. This problem is a systematic contradiction, and we can do nothing about it. Anyway, there is only one conclusion, that is, reform is doomed to fail, there is no way out for reform, or it is better not to act
speaking of this, we can find that the key to the problem is not whether it is difficult to change the organization (there is no doubt that the formulation and implementation of the new national standard for polyurethane waterproof coating has become an urgent and difficult task, which requires the wisdom of managers), Nor does it lie in whether the difficult problems of organizational change can be solved (there are more solutions than difficulties! Moreover, what cannot be solved yesterday may not be solved today, and what cannot be solved today may not still be solved tomorrow). The key to the problem lies in that we cannot give up trying to solve the problems and lose a clear understanding of the difficulties
when we feel "learned helplessness", we may not be really helpless. What we need is a clear mind and a pair of bright eyes. The opportunity in the dilemma of "unable to see" organizational change is not terrible. Maybe it can not be solved at present. Maybe it is just a problem of ability - what cannot be solved at present is to find an opportunity to solve it again. If the ability is not enough, we can improve our ability through learning or even change to a person with stronger ability; However, it is a terrible thing to "turn a blind eye" to the opportunities in the dilemma of organizational change, because it is more likely to be a behavior habit and a so-called organizational culture. (end)