Book Review: Immunity to Change*

August 7, 2009
1 Comment

A must read for anyone involved in organisational change.  This is the changemissing link…the interplay between the people and the organisation and how both can achieve the changes they desire.   Why will you love this book?

  • It’s positive – we learn about the ‘brilliant immune system’ we create which, in turn, creates behaviours that prevent us from changing
  • It’s approachable – Kegan and Lahey take some very complicated concepts on adult development and human complexity and distil them down in a way we can use, understand, and apply them
  • It’s based on research  – literally a life’s work of 2 Harvard professors
  • It’s about people and organisations:  One of the few books on change that addresses the inter-play between individual and collective mindsets

Summary

The reason why organisations fail to make intended changes is not a lack of motivation or desire, but of the hidden conflicting commitments carried in thier goals – their collective immunity to change.  Kegan and Lahey describe this as ’one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake’.  Take, for example, the school that set a goal of higher academic achievement for its students, yet uncovered that the administrators felt protective of demanding too much from their students.  Or the professional services firm that set a goal to create a culture of mutual trust and respect, but also a strong desire in the members for independence and entrepreneurship.  Until these conflicts are uncovered and understood, organisations simply cannot make the changes they desire.

And once these conflicts are understood, the organisation must learn to how change the way it learns.  Remember that old saying ‘we can’t solve problems using the same thinking we used to create them’?  Kegan and Lahey point out that we need to learn how to learn beyond our existing mindsets.’   Rather than focusing simply on developing skills (technical learning), we must focus on genuine development of human capacity to learn and grow (adaptive learning).   Adaptive learning requires both head and heart.

Sound hard?  Well, it is…and it isn’t.  It does not happen overnight.  It takes time.  Not so much huge amounts of time, but patience to allow change to occur.  And then it takes courage – collective courage of an entire leadership team to take personal risk.  One business leader is quoted in the book:

“Whatever you tell leaders, tell them this:  the courage to make these kinds of changes is energizing and contagious.  I saw people inside and outside my senior team go from ‘this is too personal’ to ‘I want to do this too!’”

So are businesses ready for this kind of transformation?  Our collective corporate language about ‘growth’ has traditionally been about numbers, not about the people behind the numbers.  But if Kegan and Lahey are right, growth in one cannot be achieved without growth in the other and it might just be time to look beyond the spreadsheets. 

Handspring teaches leaders about Immunity to Change in our training called ‘One foot on the gas and one foot on the break’.  Read more about that here:  http://www.handspring.com.au/for-individuals/speaking-and-training-module/

*Kegan, R. & Lahey,L.L. (2009).  Immunity to Change.  Boston, Massachusetts:  Harvard Business Press

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One Response to “Book Review: Immunity to Change*”

  1. Leadership 2.0 | Handspring Consulting on September 9th, 2009 9:45 pm

    [...] http://www.handspring.com.au/book-review-immunity-to-change/ book review for ‘Immunity to Change…a great resource for helping people and organisations move to more complex ways of thinking and dealing with the world [...]

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