What can 21st century science teach us about leading change? Mindfulness, choice architecture, risk psychology, evidence-based management, influencing with facts, VUCA, systems thinking, cognitive biases and much more (really).

1. The Science of Successful
Organizational Change:
How leaders set strategy, change
behavior and create an change agile
culture
For draft chapters and release information: www.paulgibbons.net/sign-up
DRAFT – FOR EDITORIAL REVIEW
PAUL GIBBONS

2. Now available for pre-order online at Amazon, and Barnes & Noble
The world of change is too riddled with fads, and myths. The book offers
readers a look at the latest science of behavioral change, influencing,
change-agility, risk psychology, and evidence-based management.
• 300 pages
• Published
by FT Press
• Release
May 2015

3. ALL OF THE ABOVE
• Does major change fail because:
– We leave it to specialists, rather than build leaders at every
level?
– We educate leaders so that change is an exception, not most of
what they have to do?
– We ground change leadership in wrong ideas about how people
grow, learn and change?
– We emphasize change tactics at the expense of change strategy
and change agility?
– We use 20th Century science, and pseudoscience, to lead 21st
Century organizations?
– We ignore many ideas from outside mainstream psychology –
behavioral economics, mindfulness, choice architecture, risk
psychology, and complexity/ probability theory?

4. Why this book?
• It is a reasonable premise that increased connectivity, and faster information flows, create a more VUCA world (volatile, uncertain,
complex, ambiguous)
• The idea that businesses are “frozen” or static entities, punctuated by episodic change, is a harmful myth – this has implications for
business education, and executive development
• While the 70% change-failure rate is an unhelpful myth, change still fails more often than it succeeds – change-agile organizations
appear to succeed 80% of the time
• What do such businesses get right?
– Change strategy – because change tactics can rarely fix a broken change strategy
• Most of what is written about change is tactical
– Change agility (agile structures, people, processes, and culture)
• Some organizations have a deep bench of change leaders requiring less tactical change “fire-fighting”
• In change-agile businesses, major change leaves the business more able to execute rather than “change fatigued” – they are in a constant state of
change readiness
– Change leadership – the new role for change leaders is more creating a change-agile organization, and less leading individual projects
– Sound change strategy in a change-agile organization removes the need for what is called change management
• Change management needs an overhaul
– Many canonical ideas are pure myth, based on disproven, or unproven psychological theories
– Many of the psychological theories that are popularized as Truth by pop psychology writers, are completely false
– The 21st century has seen major advances in understanding the human mind, its rationality and fallibility
– The human sciences, beyond psychology, have been largely ignored by the “change canon”
– Among the most promising new areas are behavioral economics, mindfulness, and the “nudge” theory
• Change leadership must evolve into a science-based craft (like surgery)
– The scientific mindset (skepticism, curiosity, experimentation) is part of a change-agile organization (a business of “tinkerers”)
– Evidence-based management is in its infancy, but show great potential to transform 21st Century businesses

5. The book in a single diagram
“Validity”
“Usefulness”
1) Make valid
ideas, from
academic
research,
useful – create
tools based on
science.
2) Validate (or
debunk and
discard)
commonly
used practices

6. CHAPTERS
INTRODUCTION
I. Failed Change – the greatest (preventable) cost to business
CHANGE AGILITY
II. From Change Fragility to Change Agility
CHANGE STRATEGY
III. Governance and the Psychology of Risk
IV. Decision-making in Complex and Ambiguous Environments
V. Cognitive Biases and Failed Strategies
CHANGE TACTICS
VI. Misunderstanding Human Behavior
VII. Changing Behaviors in the 21st Century
VIII. Changing Hearts and Minds in the 21st Century
CHANGE LEADERSHIP
IX. Leading with Science
PAUL GIBBONS

7. CHAPTER 1 –
FAILED CHANGE
PAUL GIBBONS
• Billion dollar failures, lack of consultant accountability, underestimating
complexity (especially social complexity)
– Business is critical to human flourishing, a force for great good, or harm –
great prosperity, or wastefulness
• 70% failure statistic = useless pseudo-science
– The SOCKS framework for analyzing change failure
• Change is a people problem and a leadership problem at every level
– Change management is too important to be left to specialists, change is too
great a portion of a manager’s “day-job”
• 20 change myths that many specialists still believe
– E.g. “burning platform”, “carrots and sticks”, “benchmarking and fast-
following”
• The war between “validity people” who say “there is no evidence for
what you do”, and “usefulness people” who say “leave me alone, I have
a job to do”

8. CHAPTER 2 –
CHANGE FRAGILITY TO AGILITY
• VUCA
• Definitions of change-agility
– Integral change model
• Agile people
– Growth mindset, learning agility
• Agile cultures
– Innovation, storytelling, climate behaviors
• Agile structures
– Project-based business, holacracy
– Fragile and anti-fragile structures
• Agile processes
– Agile ideas
– Agile learning
(learning 3.0)
PAUL GIBBONS
Anti-fragile systems
strengthen under stress.
Ecosystems and species do
this over eons. Compared to
those, businesses are very
fragile entities indeed.

9. CHAPTER 3 –
RISK PSYCHOLOGY
• Change strategy and strategic coherence
• Volatility
– Systematic errors people make in estimating risk
– The planning fallacy and escalation of commitment
– The deterministic fallacy
• Uncertainty
– Normal distributions and abnormal events
– Pre-mortems
– Where math meets culture – risk appetite
PAUL GIBBONS
It is more important
for leaders to
understand the
psychology of risk,
than the
mathematics of risk.

10. CHAPTER 4 –
COMPLEXITY AND AMBIGUITY
• Complexity and emergence
• Simple complexity tools
– The decision-making metagame
– Non-linearity and systems thinking
• Ambiguity
– From data, to information, to insight, to wisdom
– 21st century analytics and big data
– The human side of analytics
– Big data and leading with science
PAUL GIBBONS
The problem of
ambiguity is, today, not
one of lack of
information, but rather
a deluge of information
– as petabyte flows
interact with human
decision-systems.

11. Chapter 5 –
COGNITVE BIASES
• When to trust your gut, when to trust a model
• When are all of us smarter than one of us – the wisdom and madness of crowds
• in business
• Cognitive biases - perception biases
– Overconfidence and hubris
– The halo effect
• Cognitive biases - problem solving biases
– Cause and effect fairy tales
– The is-ought fallacy
• Cognitive biases - solution choice biases
– Action biases
– Quick fixes – cost-cutting and reorganizations
– Escalation of commitment and sunk costs
PAUL GIBBONS
By understanding
the limits of
rationality, leaders
can act like a
sharpshooter
correcting for wind
velocity, or a
yachtsman
correcting for the
tide.

12. CHAPTER 6 –
MISUNDERSTANDING PEOPLE
• Folk psychology, gurus and pop psychology
– Don’t let Deepak manage your change program
• Psychological myths
– Grief cycles, learning styles, catharsis effect and other widely accepted
nonsense
• Psychology – an infant science
– Psychology came late to the Scientific Revolution
• Neuroscience and neurobabble
– The fish and the brain scanner
– Early days for useful neuroscience in business
• Are psychologists making us sicker
– The happiness cult
PAUL GIBBONS
Gladwell puts the pop
in pop psychology, and
is revered in change
management circles.
Even the experts he
makes famous roundly
criticize his (mis-) use
of science.

13. CHAPTER 7 –
CHANGING BEHAVIORS
• Bad behaviorism – “punished by rewards”
• The cognitive backlash in Psychology
– Change your insides to change your outsides
• Neo-behaviorism
– Pass control of behavior to the environment
• Behavioral specificity – checklists
• Behavioral safety
• From change agent to choice architect
– Nudging and its role in change
• The mastery of habit
– Mini-habits, starting new habits, breaking bad habits
• Behavioral (embodied) learning
– Beyond theoretical leadership to embodied leadership
PAUL GIBBONS
Neo-behaviorists
pass control of
behavior to the
environment – and
realize that
sometimes you act
your way into a
new way of
thinking.

14. CHAPTER 8 –
CHANGING HEARTS AND MINDS
• Resistance
– Greatly reduced in change-agile businesses
• Holistic model of resistance to change
– Herd effects, ideology, habit
• From Change Management 101 to wicked messes
– Most businesses would profit from solidly applying CM101, but CM101 does
not handle social complexity
– Large group interventions
• Influencing with facts
– The backfire effect
– Lessons from science-based influencing
• The mindful leader
– Mindfulness benefits
– The research behind mindfulness
– Mindfulness practices
– Mindfulness in business
PAUL GIBBONS
If mindfulness came in
pill form, drug
companies would be
spending billions, and I
would certainly take it
three times a day.

15. CHAPTER 9 –
LEADING WITH SCIENCE
• What is science
– Science, pre-science, pseudoscience, and anti-science
• Stamping out anti-science
– From anti-science to scientific mindset
• From pre-science to evidence-based management
– Types of evidence
• Leadership, foresight, and rationality
– Most cataclysmic failures were at least part failures of rationality
• Science, leadership, change, planet
• Business leadership and human flourishing
PAUL GIBBONS
Although science is not
easy in complex
human systems, we
cannot afford to throw
our hands in the air
and give up. It may
take decades, but it is
a game worth playing
and winning.

16. NEOLOGISMS AND NEW
ADAPTATIONS FOR BUSINESS
Leadership as “science-based craft”
Change backwash
SOCKS (shortfall, overrun, consequences,
killed, sustainability)
Change mythology
Change portfolio management
Strategic coherence
Episodic change
Project based businesses
VUCA and change management
Decision-making metagame
Cognitive biases affecting change strategy
Killer cognitive biases questions
Confidence without competence
Extended rationality
Hubris and leadership
Pop leadership
Psychomyths
Folk psychology in business
Neurobabble
Neo-behaviorism
Bad behaviorism
Mini-habits
Behavioral commitment
From change manager to choice architect
Holistic model of resistance to change
Growth cultures
Psychologizing change
Four Ds of resistance
Sacrifice “power over”, for “power to”
Wicked (social) messes
Fact-based influencing and backfire
Mindful leadership
21st century leadership
Third plane of leadership development –
BE, DO, and “Foresight”
Scientific leadership
The human side of analytics
PAUL GIBBONS

17. New ideas for change experts
• SOCKS framework for analyzing change failure
• The psychology of risk – the implications of a probabilistic worldview (black swans, extremistan)
• The sixteen most important cognitive biases affecting change and their effect on decision-making and
facilitation
• Neo-behaviorist approaches – choice architecture
• Change agility – learning 3.0, agile structures
• Habits, herd-effects, ideology and change resistance
• Trusting guts versus trusting models – the pitfalls of intuition
• 20 change myths that most people still believe (burning platforms, “business as usual”, Lewin,
benchmarking, engagement, etc)
• Psychological myths (e.g. learning styles, the catharsis hypothesis, and grief cycle)
• The backfire effect, and new strategies for fact-based influencing
• New organizational models, including project-based businesses and holacracy
• The integral change model
• Embodied learning
• Research on mindfulness and its place in 21st century businesses
• Integral change model

18. New ideas for executives
Note: A few of these are topics are well-known by expert change practitioners, but much less known in the
executive community.
• Decision-making under complexity – the decision-making metagame
• Understanding complexity and emergence
• Strategic coherence is more important than strategic excellence
• Change leadership needs to evolve from leading programs to creating change-agile organizations
• Change leadership at every level will remove most of the need for change management
• When are all of us really smarter than one of us?
• The deterministic fallacy, and the probabilistic nature of change
• Trusting your gut versus trusting a model – the power and limits of intuition
• The planning fallacy, escalation of commitment, and change risk
• Systems thinking, systems archetypes, causal loop diagrams and how they solve the problems of dynamic
complexity
• Large-group interventions and how the solve the problems of social complexity
• The myths and dangers of coercive (behaviorist) behavioral change
• The importance of behavioral specificity in leading change
• The difference between neuroscience and neurobabble
• How pseudo-science and anti-science can be replaced by the scientific mindset and evidence-based
management

19. The author
• Brand: Science/ philosophy and business strategy
and leadership
• Early career: Scientist, programmer, derivatives
trader
• Consulting internationally, to worlds top-25
corporations for 22 years
• Part-time lecturer and researcher at major
universities
• Founded, ran and sold well-established leadership
boutique
• Degrees: neuroscience, organizational psychology,
philosophy
• Two boys, European, living in Colorado
PAUL GIBBONS

20. QUOTES FOR JOURNALISTS
• When leaders talk about the next quarter, they ought to be talking about the next quarter century.
• Compared to ecosystems and some species, corporations are very fragile entities indeed.
• The notion of “business as usual” is a harmful myth
• It is time to euthanize change management
• Strategic coherence is more important than strategic perfection
• Sacrifice “power-over” to get “power-to”
• Most businesses would profit from consistently applying Change Management 101
• Leaders need to correct for cognitive biases the way a sharpshooter corrects for wind velocity or a
yachtsman corrects for the tide
• Yesterday’s decision-making strategies are ill-equipped to deal with petabyte information flows
• Ambiguity, today, is not lack of data, but a deluge of data
• Green light, STOP - if you want to see where you are taking the most risk, look where you are
making the most money.
• The problem is not lack of competence, it is confidence without competence
• All of us are not always smarter than one of us, leaders need to distinguish between the wisdom of
crowds and the madness of crowds
PAUL GIBBONS

21. QUOTES FOR JOURNALISTS
• The best way to encourage out of the box thinking is to draw the box correctly in the first
place
• The essence of rationality is to know when you are being irrational
• Too few leaders have the emotional fortitude to take responsibility for failure
• That which a team does not want to discuss, it most needs to discuss
• Psychological pseudoscience dies hard, especially when there are commercial interests at
stake
• Creating change-agile businesses will eliminate the need for what we today call “change
management”
• We need more leadership books that offer information as well as inspiration
• Pop leadership is among the most destructive forces in business
• The gap between thought and action, between belief and will, prevents us solving our most
pressing individual and societal problems
• The key to behavioral change is to pass behavioral control to the environment
PAUL GIBBONS

22. • The “grief cycle”, for some people, may be excitement, enthusiasm, engagement, effort,
and excellence
• Setting absurdly high-standards, and being unwilling to be a novice, are the joint enemies
of personal progress and change
• Business is the most important institution on the planet for furthering human flourishing
• Stamping out anti-science will eliminate an enormous amount of business waste
• We cannot afford to have 21st Century businesses run on 20th century science, and
pseudoscience
• Leadership must become like surgery, a “science-based craft”
• Most change strategy models are not very strategic – change strategy is an important
lynchpin between business strategy and change tactics
• Business people need to understand the psychology of risk more than the mathematics of
risk
• The human side of analytics is the biggest challenge to implementing big data
• The most damaging cognitive bias is overconfidence, making leaders use their “gut” when
they should be more rational
QUOTES FOR JOURNALISTS
PAUL GIBBONS

23. • The psychological theories that inform day-to-day business practices are comprised mostly
of folk-psychology, fads, and myths
• Behaviorism was a busted flush, but neo-behaviorist theories, especially choice
architecture, achieve behavioral change without coercion or the downsides of “carrots and
sticks”
• Resistance to change should be a thing of the past if we could create organizations with
“growth cultures”
• Mindfulness promises a great number of desirable benefits, and is based on much more
solid research than many competing ideas on how to change people
• Many of the cataclysmic leadership failures were failures of rationality. The pendulum of
leadership development needs to swing back toward the rational: strategy, creativity,
foresight, decision-making, and analytics.
QUOTES FOR JOURNALISTS
PAUL GIBBONS