Creating Stability Is Just as Important as Managing Change

Imagine, for a moment, being on the receiving end of the sort of communication that typically heralds a change at work. An email, say, announces a reorganization to be carried out over the course of the next few months. The language is cheery and optimistic, and talks in upbeat terms about the many opportunities that will flow from the latest transformation or realignment.

The psychological effect of a missive like this, however, is less positive. Its first effect is to introduce uncertainty — what, exactly will happen, you wonder? This is coupled with a diminution in your sense of agency — you can’t control what is about to take place. As the re-org unfolds, usually over the course of several months, teams are broken up and rearranged — and this, in turn, severs your sense of belonging and your social support networks. As people are moved around, the cast of characters in the office everyday changes, too — and so the rituals which underpin daily life are upset. And as the new configuration emerges, it’s not always readily apparent where your work fits in — your sense of the value of what you do is diminished.

Each of these shifts makes it harder for people to do their jobs. The science is clear: people do best at work when their environment is predictable, when they have some sense of control over their immediate surroundings, when they are part of a stable set of relationships, when they feel connected to place and ritual, and when the point of their efforts is readily apparent to them. Seen through the lens of this research, then, constant change emerges as the enemy of performance, not its catalyst.

But that’s not how we usually think of change. We have come to believe that change is (necessarily) good, that disruption is (necessarily) the way to a better future, and that when people resist the latest new strategy or structure, that resistance is a failure to be overcome, rather than a signal of what humans need at work. As a result, when we think about change at work today, we tend to assume its inevitability and focus our attention on how to manage it — what methods and processes and technology and communication we need to put in place to have it move ahead more smoothly.

Of course, some change is necessary, and some is inevitable. But not all of it. What the scientific literature on predictability, agency, belonging, place, and meaning suggests is that before we think about managing change, we should consider the conditions that people need at work in order to be productive. We should be less eager to instigate change in our organizations, and more wary of it when outside events force our hand. And we should cultivate a renewed appreciation for the virtues of stability, together with an understanding of how to practice what I’ll call “stability management.”

To be clear, today there is no such thing as stability management. But, guided by the psychological evidence, and informed by the practices I’ve discovered that support the sorts of environments in which people can offer up their best work, we can sketch its outlines.

What is stability management?

In contrast with change management, which arrives only when a particular change is mooted, stability management — because it addresses fundamental human psychological needs that can’t be switched on and off at will — needs to be a continuous, always-on organizational discipline. It is a way of managing an environment, not a way of navigating a moment.

Stability management concerns itself with what’s working on a given day, whereas change management starts with what isn’t. Stability management elevates the need to give attention, where change management over-rotates toward feedback. And where change management focuses on the organization overall, on what will be different, and on communicating urgency, stability management focuses on local teams, on what will be constant, and on communicating reality.

Stability management recognizes the importance of teams.

Teams are the source of much stability for their members. The research team that I led at Cisco found three groups of conditions that best predicted team performance:

• The first of these groups concerns an individual’s contribution — whether they understand what is expected of them, whether they get to play to their strengths frequently, and so forth.
• The second group of conditions concerns the team as a whole — whether they support one another, for example, or whether they have a shared understanding of excellence.
• And the third group of conditions connects the team to the broader organization — asking, for example, whether the mission of that organization is exciting for team members.

What the Cisco researchers discovered was that each of these three groups of conditions — individual contributions, team environment, and company environment — varies by team. Even though two of the three groups of conditions — those concerning an individual and those connecting to the company — on their face had little to do with a team, nevertheless the team was the most important mediator of those. Our experience of work is created by those around us.

Moreover, the Cisco studies were not just studies of teams, but were studies of performance — so the different sets of conditions were those that distinguished the higher performing teams. And stability runs like a seam through all of them. Understanding expectations or being able to work effectively aid in creating a sense of predictability and agency. Being supported by those around you aids in a sense of belonging. And understanding the connection between our daily efforts and the direction and impact of the organization overall gives meaning to our work. Each of these lives on a team, or it does not live at all — and so stability management seeks to preserve intact teams, seeks to support team leaders in building thriving teams, and considers teams to be the most important organizational unit.

Stability management focuses on what will be constant.

As to what teams do week in and week out to create a sense of stability, my recent research found many instances of teams going out of their way to honor ritual. The Harvard Business School professor and researcher Michael Norton explained to me that humans use rituals as emotional governors, and clearly teams are no exception to this.

On one team I learned about, the team leader had ritualized mutual support: each week began with a quick call where team members shared what was on their plate and whether they needed help from their peers; and the week ended with a call where team members publicly recognized those who had supported them and others. Here, then, ritual helpfully governed the emotions of stress and unbelonging.

Elsewhere, I discovered similarly effective rituals that virtualized the morning hellos and evening goodbyes of in-office work during the Covid-19 pandemic (ritualizing a sense of belonging, again), or that ritualized the sharing of information during a crisis (a weekly, never-skipped update that thereby ritualized information certainty). Stability management will emphasize, augment, and honor ritual wherever it is found.

Stability management focuses on communicating in real words.

Organizational leaders have a key role to play in stability management, too. They can ensure that team leaders understand — and are trained in — their critical stability-enhancing role, of course. They can push to keep teams intact as much as possible (as, for example, in consulting firms, where teams often go together from project to project, rather than being disbanded and reformed each time). And they can also ensure that organizational communications promote stability, by being written in real words — words, that is, that connect to reality, and will connect the same way tomorrow as they do today, as distinct from the fog of euphemism and cheer-speak in which many business communications are couched today.

Not long ago, a video of an employee being laid off went viral on TikTok — and it’s hard not to conclude that the glaring absence of real words was part of what prompted such outrage on the part of viewers. Instead of claiming, then, that a decision to lay someone off emerged from a “collective calibration” process, or involved “attainment and leading indicators of data,” leaders need to speak more plainly and directly. In the video, the terminated employee even suggested how to word the reason for the layoff: “[You] decided to hire too many people and are now actually realizing that [you] can’t afford this many people.” That’s a much better script. As one of my interviewees for my latest book told me, “People can handle the truth quite well.” And the truth, even when it describes change, is, in itself, a source of stability.

. . .

As the now constant cycle of re-orgs and restructuring churns through our workplaces; as the perpetual introduction of new leaders, technology, process, policy, and software upends daily work; and as reshuffled teams try to grapple with the latest strategic transformations, reinventions and reboots, we have lost our way. We have lost our grasp of what works from a business perspective — most mergers, for example, destroy value; layoffs don’t address the underlying issues — and we have lost sight of what humans need in order to work most effectively. The key question for any business in a turbulent world is not how to instigate disruption, or manage change, but rather how to help people offer their best.

When it is improvement we seek, or growth, or innovation, the way to get there relies on providing the psychological foundations for human performance. The way to get there relies, above all else, on stability.