Mrs Doyle, from the hit TV comedy Father Ted, hits the nail on the head regarding resistance to change during one classic episode.
For those of you who do not know the series, I’ve included a few YouTube clips below. In summary, Mrs Doyle is the loyal housekeeper of two priests in the irreverent series that has proved remarkably popular over the years.
The point of this particular episode is that some bright spark has invented a super clever bit of technological wizardry that makes tea automatically, takes away the drudgery, the misery.
In our world today, innovation, transformation, FinTech, you name it, things are changing with such pace, able to solve so many problems, and yes, take the frustration out of end of quarter accounts, of customer service processes. You name it, drudgery can be a thing of the past.
Except, some people are rather comfortable with their way of doing things, their problems, the things they like to complain about. Take that away, and what have they got left?
Of course, you may well say, they’ve got new opportunities, they can take on new challenges, upskill their part in the overall process. But that is your version of their future life, not their version of their future life.
The thing is, while they may be complaining, they are also benefitting in many ways, particularly at a psychological level from the problems they inhabit. And they may not even be aware of these payoffs until you start to take them away.
Some find them secretly exciting. The pressure comes on, the adrenaline pumps, they have purpose. The attention also comes on when problems are occurring, from senior levels, those having to manage the crisis are very visible, if they struggle and prevail, they’ll be hailed as heroes.
There is always a pay-off somewhere, that is reinforcing their habitual actions that live in the problem, and until you mitigate this psychologically, you’re going to have resistance.
Solve the problem, and the habits have no purpose, and without the habits, who is the person. There can be extremely deep psychological factors that incline people to prefer the current problem to the unknown future.
With Mrs Doyle, so much of her identity and purpose is connected to her role as tea-maker. One of the priests, believing the machine will make her happy, removing the misery, buys it for her as a Christmas present.
Now, a large part of her identity has been outsourced.
If you haven’t seen the episode, I’m sure you can guess what happens. In the middle of the night she sneaks into the sitting room and sabotages the machine so it will never work again. And thus she maintains her identity, role and purpose.
It may be comedy, but it is also illustrative of the contemporary challenges of change and transformation.
Which is why whenever you are contemplating a change, you have to ask some very deep questions, objectively, the drill down to the bottom of the psychological payoffs from the current state.
For one client, the stakeholder had to report on the problems to the CEO twice a week. The client thought his solution would alleviate the stress and exposure (and perhaps dismissal) of the stakeholder.
Yet, in reality, the stakeholder was fine with that, because what they really needed (their personal agenda) was to get noticed by the CEO who would otherwise never have heard of them.
Once you realise the true motivators, agendas, you can amend your approach and likely still solve the problem, but in a way that doesn’t get sabotaged.
Of course, Mrs Doyle maybe be somewhat extreme (see below), but then again…
Maybe I Like Misery
The Best of Mrs Doyle
Colin Gautrey
Provocative Coach/Mentor | Specialism: Impact and Influence
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