Inherent Friction

“If everyone’s on board, then you’re not leading change of any substance whatsoever.”

I recently came across this comment in something I was reading. It got me thinking.

It’s conventional to think that change rides within the vehicle of consensus. Leaders will look to communicate and gain agreement on a direction, action, or initiative before initiating the planned action. It’s a form of directive leadership but it expects to gain agreement with the idea that agreement equals ignition of the change.

The truth is that there is often unaddressed friction across any attempted change. Friction related to stopping old behavior or functions and replace them with new ways of doing or being. This reality of moving from a state of A to a state of B is at the core of change.  Laying out the phases or steps of change is like reading the menu at a restaurant but cooking the food and delivering the food to the table is where the movement is, and that takes work. Change does not walk itself through the door. It is not simply spoken into existence.

Change requires traction to move forward, and traction takes friction at the point of surface contact. The practice of moving and affecting behaviors of people and culture share similar qualities to the laws of physics. Like physics, to keep friction points from overheating, the use of lubrication can facilitate gaining the benefits of friction while managing the heat generated by the movement. Change in organizational, team, or individual settings can benefit from forms of social lubrication. Those things that remove or reduce destructive friction but enable the right forms of friction for forward movement.

There are different ways to introduce social or psychological lubricants. Before you can design for that strategy, you must first realize change is a friction game and not a matter of agreement. It’s one thing to order a great burger but it’s another thing to get it from the menu to your plate.