A new article by Alan Deutschman in Fast Company joins a growing number of other sources in arguing that the only way to achieve real, sustained change is to appeal to feelings rather than to reason. Deutschman’s article, by looking at high-stakes success and failure in personal change, and by highlighting “five myths”, provides a useful point of departure to consider the state of the art.

With lifespans in the billions of years, stars change so slowly that they make the rate of glacial change look frenetic by comparison. They keep on burning their nuclear fuel at a steady rate for millions of millennia. But some stars stand out as change champions. A certain rare type of neutron star, known as a magnetar, can wake up and, in just a fifth of a second, blast out as much energy as our sun emits in 250,000 years. (Such an object residing about 250,000 light years away, named SGR 1806-20, was detected on December 27, 2004.) Are human beings steady in their orbits, making real and rapid change practically impossible, or can they be induced to burst out of old habits, emitting new energy and new behaviors?

We all know the reasons why change sometimes becomes desirable or even critical: new competitors have redrawn the battlefield, forcing the end of business-as-usual; customers’ preferences shift; markets are abruptly exposed to global forces; regulations are imposed or removed; continued growth calls for moving into a new market; or a merger or acquisition compels alterations to organizational structure, culture, and leadership. Outside the context of the work organization, we may want to change in order to improve our health, career success, relationships, or sense of worthiness and contribution. If the reasons to change are many, the opportunities plentiful, and the rewards rich, why do we fail so often—both as individuals and as part of an organization?

Resistance Unto Death
Management writers like to talk about the “urgent need for change”, and why change is “critical” for the future of an organization. We might find it puzzling that executives and rank-and-file employees resist changing in such circumstances. Consider how much more puzzling it is when we don’t change even when we know that failure to adopt new and lasting changes in behavior will very probably kill us.

One virtue of Deutschman’s article is that he considers exactly that kind of case. He tells us about patients with heart disease so severe that they undergo traumatic and expensive bypass surgery. Despite the procedures, about half the time the bypass grafts clog up in a few years, or a few months in the case of angioplasties. Many patients could prevent the return of pain and repeated surgery by adopting healthier lifestyles. Yet 9 out of 10 patients persist in the same lifestyle—or deathstyle.

In such dire circumstances, if people cannot or will not change, what are the odds that we will manage to change, in our personal lives or in our organizations? With varying degrees of success, Deutschman draws on the story of the cardiac patients to make a case for five myths of behavioral change. Myth #1 says: “Crisis is a powerful impetus for change.” Curiously, while citing John Kotter as support for his thesis, Deutschman seems not to notice the close fit of this “myth” with Kotter’s first step for causing change: “Create a sense of urgency.” What the cardiac cases show is only that a sense of urgency or crisis is not sufficient for change, not that it isn’t a significant part of the solution.

The same point applies to the next two purported myths, though we can easily find additional support for these. Myth #2 says: “Change is motivated by fear.” If fear was reliably effective, we would expect a life-threatening condition to be motivation aplenty. The problem is that the hot flames of fear are often doused by the cool waters of denial. This article echoes the message of the “positive psychology” movement in making the alternative claim that “compelling, positive visions of the future are a much stronger inspiration for change.”

Myth #3 says: “The facts will set us free.” The heart patients knew the facts about their condition and their prognosis. They knew they could improve their prospects by making specific lifestyle changes. 90 percent of them didn’t change course to follow where the facts pointed. As Daniel Kahneman and others have shown, our thinking is strongly influenced by conceptual “frames”—the mental models we use to understand our place in the world. When we come up against facts that have no place in our frames, we reject them, ignore them, or forget them. Furthermore, factual statements have far less power to inspire change than do emotional appeals.

The two remaining common beliefs labeled by Deutschman as myths are less central. Myth #4 assures us that “small, gradual changes are always easier to make and sustain”, while #5 claims that we can’t change because our brains become “hardwired” early in life. While slow, gradual change might succeed in “boiling the frog”, it’s also quite possible that the employee will hop out of harm’s way. Slow change can also fail because it doesn’t produce the real, noticeable benefits possible from big changes—so long as the first of these arrive early enough (those fabled “short-term wins”). Modern neuroscience has little use for the idea of hardwired brains, having demonstrated the potential for lifelong plasticity. Realizing that potential does require periodically taking on new challenges and learning new things.

We also know that people can make major changes in behavior and lifestyle, because we’ve either seen it or witnessed it on occasion. This isn’t always a good thing—cults excel at deploying psychological technology at its most ruthlessly effective to induce lasting change. Deutschman’s own example nicely balances the discouraging story of the heart patients. In stark contrast to the 90 percent failure rate in that case, an insurance company-funded study found far better results for 333 patients of Dr. Dean Ornish.

These patients, who aimed to stick with a strict diet to reverse heart disease, received various kinds of support on the Ornish program over the course of one year, including two group sessions per week, and instruction in meditation, relaxation, yoga, and aerobic exercise. After three years, 77 percent of the patients had maintained their lifestyle changes.

So, it can be done. So, how can it be done?

From Proposition to Passion
The great philosopher Aristotle, long ago explained three paths to changing the mind of another person: ethos, pathos, and logos. Ethos refers to persuasion that projects character as produced by moral habits; practical wisdom, virtue, and good sense; pathos appeals to passion or emotion; and logos appeals to reason and rational order. John Kotter, whose work on leading change centers on the role of pathos, says that “behavior change happens mostly by speaking to people’s feelings.”

No matter how sound and detailed, rational arguments have little power to induce change in difficult situations. Executives, as well as engineers, scientists and others of an analytical and technical mindset, find this difficult to accept and act on. Business schools reinforce the rationalistic logos approach by teaching the “analyze-think-change” method. What rationality requires, however, is choosing means that actually work to achieve the desired end. Reason itself can indicate that pure rationality should be set aside for a specific purpose: logos directs us to pathos. Echoing Henry Mintzberg’s alternative approach to strategizing, Kotter urges business schools to complement their traditional teaching with a “see-feel-change” method. (Even re-engineering guru Michael Hammer has urged executives to devote more attention to emotional factors in selling change.)

Kotter has developed a program for putting the power of emotively-driven change to work. In his 1990 book, A Force for Change, he set out eight steps:

1. Create a sense of urgency.
2. Form a powerful guiding coalition.
3. Create a clear vision.
4. Communicate the vision.
5. Empower people to take action by removing obstacles and changing systems or structures.
6. Plan for and create short-term wins.
7. Consolidate improvements and keep up the momentum.
8. Institutionalize the changes.

Kotter says that change leaders must follow these steps exactly in the prescribed sequence. Psychologist Howard Gardner also thinks we need to tackle change in the right order to make it successful. In his “Change Delivery Plan”, Gardner stresses the need to create alignment with the desired changes. This means starting with drivers (purpose, vision, mission, objectives, and strategy), then moving to processes, then technology, organization and people and skills. Although difficult to map precisely to Kotter’s eight steps, the two frameworks appear to be consistent.

Another prominent psychologist, James O. Prochaska, has set out his own stages of change. These five stages are addressed more to individuals than to organizations, but cohere with the Kotter and Gardner plans:

1. Precontemplation (“Never”)
2. Contemplation (“Someday”)
3. Preparation (“Soon”)
4. Action (“Now”)
5. Maintenance (“Forever”)

If the power of pathos exceeds the rule of reason, what is the most effective way for leaders to elicit passion? Since lasting change is not motivated by fear, we’re looking for a positive form of passion that attracts rather than coerces change. Kotter has already pointed to part of the answer in the form of creating clear and compelling visions. In “The Power of Feelings”, he adds, “Change leaders make their points in ways that are as emotionally engaging and compelling as possible. They rely on vivid stories that are told and retold.”

Pathos induced by positive visions and narratives puts into practice the rejection of Myth #2 (“Change is motivated by fear”). If, as Deutschman said, “our thinking is guided by narratives, not facts,” what kinds of stories should change leaders construct? And how can they craft them for maximum impact in overcoming deep psychological barriers to change? The second and concluding part of this article will answer those questions.