
Baron Joseph Lister (1827-1912), who discovered the importance of antiseptic procedures in surgery. Before his innovative work, infections were believed to be caused by airborne agents — "bad air." Surgeons were not required to wash hands or instruments between patients. Meanwhile, midwives, who at the time did wash hands and instruments, had been experiencing infant mortality rates much lower than surgeons. This fact went unexplained until Lister's work. Photo courtesy U.S. National Institutes of Health, from a collection entitled Images from the History of Medicine in the U.S. National Library of Medicine.
On October 14, 2011, the Apple iPhone 4S first became available for sale. Lines formed at Apple stores around the world, and pre-release sales of a million units broke all records for mobile phones. Though no buyers had yet seen it, they felt that the new phone was a welcome change.
On September 21, 1867, the British Medical Journal published a pioneering paper entitled, "On the Antiseptic Principle in the Practice of Surgery," by British surgeon Joseph Lister (1827-1912), in which he advocated sterilization of instruments to prevent infection following surgery. His methods were rapidly adopted throughout Britain. Not so in the United States. The failure of the U.S. medical community to embrace the changes Lister advocated was most unfortunate for President James Garfield, who, on July 2, 1881, was the victim of an assassination attempt in which two bullets struck him. Efforts by surgeons to trace one of the bullets, using their unwashed fingers and unsterilized instruments, led to massive infections. Garfield finally succumbed to a heart attack on September 19.
One change was overwhelmingly welcomed; the other shunned. Why? It's an important question, because our assessments of the net value of changes can be most unreliable. Here's Part I of a catalog of factors that can distort our assessment of changes.
- Inability to grasp circumstantial complexity
- All change involves both losses and gains, but between them there is a fundamental asymmetry. When we experience a loss, it's usually a loss of something we know well. When we experience a gain, it's usually a gain of something we don't yet fully appreciate. Because we don't have it, it's difficult to understand the full scope of its benefits.
- Like all circumstances, the full circumstances of the new status quo are complex. Until we fully adapt to the change, we tend to understand our losses more easily than our gains. That's one reason why our assessment of the net value of a coming change can tend to bias us against it.
- The seductiveness of simplicity
- Some changes appear All change involves both
losses and gains, but
between them there is a
fundamental asymmetrysimple. Whether by design or by happenstance, these changes seem to be minor, or they promise to simplify dramatically some parts of our lives. We tend to welcome these changes even before we understand their full implications. - The error we make here is confusing the change, which seems simple, with the circumstances surrounding the change, which are always complex. This error is responsible for many of the mishaps we call unintended consequences. For most systems, which are far more complex than we appreciate, changing one element can ripple through the system in ways we can understand only after the system demonstrates them to us.
In Part II, we'll examine how social factors can influence our assessment of the goodness of a change. Next issue in this series
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Even though the U.S. medical community spurned Lister's methods, some were convinced. In 1879, Listerine was first formulated. At the time, it was intended as a solution for sterilizing surgical instruments. For more about Joseph Lister, see his biography in Wikipedia. See Wikipedia also for more about Listerine. For the story of James Garfield, see the new book by Candice Millard: Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President.
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Related articles
More articles on Organizational Change:
Don't Rebuild the Chrysler Building
- When we undertake change, we're usually surprised at the effort and cost required. Much of this effort
and cost is necessary because of the nature of the processes we're changing. What can we do differently
to make change easier in the future?
Change How You Change
- In the past two years, your life has probably changed. Do you commute over the same route you did two
years ago? Same transportation? Same job? Same company? Same industry? Change is all around, and you're
probably pretty skilled at it. You can become even more skilled if you change how you change.
Workplace Taboos and Change
- In the workplace, some things can't be discussed — they are taboo. When we're aware of taboos,
we can choose when to obey them, and when to be more flexible. When we're unaware of them, they can
limit our ability to change.
The True Costs of Cost-Cutting
- The metaphor "trimming the fat" rests on the belief that some parts of the organization are
expendable, and we can remove them with little impact on the remainder. Ah, if only things actually
worked that way...
When Change Is Hard: II
- When organizational change is difficult, we sometimes blame poor leadership or "resistance."
But even when we believe we have good leadership and the most cooperative populations, we can still
encounter trouble. Why is change so hard so often?
See also Organizational Change and Organizational Change for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
Coming April 30: On Planning in Plan-Hostile Environments: II
- When we finally execute plans, we encounter obstacles. So we find workarounds or adjust the plans. But there are times when nothing we try gets us back on track. When this happens for nearly every plan, we might be working in a plan-hostile environment. Available here and by RSS on April 30.
And on May 7: Subject Matter Bullying
- Most workplace bullying tactics have analogs in the schoolyard — isolation, physical attacks, name-calling, and rumor-mongering are common examples. Subject matter bullying might be an exception, because it requires expertise in a sophisticated knowledge domain. And that's where trouble begins. Available here and by RSS on May 7.
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