Eight miles

A story about change told by Rhiannon Personick. Edited by Michelle Pauk.

Before Rhiannon Personick became a Scrum Master, she’d worked for many years as a social worker. She sees many connections in her experiences leading and supporting change between her social work experience and her current role as an agilist and servant leader. Here is one of the stories she told me that illustrates this connection and demonstrates a change pattern she’s observed.

One of the first times I learned about the difficulty handling change as a person with power was while working in a wilderness program with juvenile delinquent boys at my first job. There were 12 boys, ranging from ages 13 to 17, and three adults, aged 23, 25 and 26. We were in Florida, backpacking. On Day One of the backpacking trip we were supposed to walk four miles. When we stopped and had lunch, we as the adults got together and discussed among ourselves. The conversation went a bit like this:

Adult 1: Wow, we made good time!

Adult 2: It’s only noon and we’ve already gone four miles!

Adult 3: I know we were supposed to stop and camp for the night and then go another four miles tomorrow, but why not just walk another four miles after lunch?

In unison: Let’s do it!

So we decided we were going to eat lunch, and then continue walking.

When we get to the second campsite later that day, we sit down to go over the agenda with the kids. As we’re reviewing the plans, one of the teenagers interrupts us and says:

“Wait a minute, you made us walk eight miles when we only needed to walk four?”

Long pause.

Teenager: “But you didn't ask us. You didn't talk to us.”

Adult 1: Yeah, that’s true, but you made it! We did all eight miles!

Adult 2: We did great!

Adult 3: We were so good! You were so productive! We delivered!

Then we went to bed. When we woke up the next morning, every single kid said, “We're not moving.” Twelve against three. These teenage boys refused to do anything, refused to listen to us, refused to move.

If I do a retrospective on that now, it's because we as the adults were ready for that change. We're the ones who made the decision. We did not consult them, we didn't talk to “the team.” We didn't bring them into the decision. We just forced the change on them. 

They were resistant to that change because of us, and we never took ownership. I still look back at that, and I think, “Oh my gosh, I never took ownership over the fact that I messed up.” We blamed the kids the entire time.

Connecting this story to her present experience as a Scrum Master, Rhiannon shared this powerful insight about how change permeates through the various layers of the organizational hierarchy.

By the time they decide to implement a change, leadership has taken the time to wrap their brains around it. The problem is when they begin to pass it down the hierarchy, they expect the other layers of the organization to be at the same place they’re at. Of course there’s no way that could happen because the lower levels haven’t had the time to go through the change process the leaders have already gone through. And often there’s a lack of empathy for those going through their own change process, especially for the people who are stuck. 

We assume that the people who are stuck are stubborn, and that they’re just not ever going to change. And because we assume that, we start finger-pointing and using them as the fall people, we start counseling them out and trying to get them out of the org. Or we just pretend the problem doesn't exist, and hope they will either go away or finally catch up. And it's really because leadership didn't take the time to help the other parts of the org go through the same process they went through when it came to the change, to accept it.

We in leadership forget that it took time to adjust and accept the change. If you don't give people that time to adjust and accept, you’ll see them as resistant to change, and then you treat them horribly. You chastise them and you blame them. You don't reflect back on what you went through, what has helped you, what you needed to do differently, or what you do need to do differently to help bring them along.

“Change, especially the kind we didn’t choose, often takes more time than we realize to accept and ultimately implement. What can we do differently to help bring others along? What could happen if we charted and walked the path together?”