The human aspect in sustainable change and innovation

Abstract

Imagine an everyday situation when driving to work except this time your usual route is blocked due to construction work for a couple of weeks. When realizing this would you not ruggedly wake from the brainless automation that literally makes you float to the office? And would you not quickly need to take back control over your turns in order to follow the detour? What distinguishes a rehearsed mental situation from the deliberate? How can humans actively participate in a change process? Finally, what is needed to sustain that change? Continue to imagine that, when finally arriving at your desk, your office PC lets you know that your password expired. Most people - including myself - have a hard time to come up with a new set of letters, characters and numbers. Why is it so hard to think of something new and why do I struggle to use the new password for weeks? I enter the old password and only when it fails does my brain begin to question my action. Only then will my cognition remind me that I had to change it and that I have a new one. It will take a while until I get used to the new password. But after that it will become the usual password. The same applies to the example of the roadblock: Using the detour for a few weeks, you will sink into the same automation but with a changed route. It is the power of habit - the things we do regularly are processed in our brains automatically. A habit is acting on an accepted status quo and we tend not to think about it or even question its necessity or validity.