I’ve written in the past about the need to Do It Wrong Quickly—to stop the slow consensus approach to all marketing decision making and start experimenting. But many people have told me that, although this idea makes sense to them, they just can’t bring themselves to do it. Some changes just seem harder than others, don’t they? One reason people struggle with change is they don’t distinguish between adaptive change and technical change.
Let’s look at an example that has nothing to do with marketing. Suppose you’ve decided that you want to get up an hour earlier each day. Perhaps you want to pray in the morning, or do some exercise, or start writing that book. Logically, if you go to bed an hour earlier each day, and add this activity first thing in the morning, you should be able to pull it off, right?
But no matter what you do, you just can’t seem to get to bed an hour earlier. You just can’t get up an hour earlier. It feels like a big change.
It is a big change. It requires you to alter longstanding habits. You might have to forgo watching your favorite show to go to bed earlier. You might have to give up the time you spend talking to your spouse each night. You might not see these implications as the root of your problem, however. Instead, you might tell yourself, “I just can’t get up an hour earlier” or “My body clock just won’t adjust to this schedule.”
For you, getting up an hour earlier might be an adaptive change—one that requires you to change your beliefs about yourself or change other habits that you consider to be part of who you are.
Let’s consider another example. Come spring in many countries, the clocks are adjusted to Daylight Savings Time—where I live, we did it yesterday. The entire country sets their clocks an hour ahead—that means that everyone is essentially going to bed an hour earlier and getting up an hour earlier. And no one has any trouble with it. Exactly the same behavior change. What’s going on here?
Adjusting to Daylight Savings Time is a technical change, rather than an adaptive one—a technical change alters something external only and requires no personal adaptation. Because everyone is changing their schedule at the same time that you are, no huge adjustment of your life priorities is triggered.
This example demonstrates that a good deal of the pain involved in change goes on inside your own mind. Clearly, your body clock is adjustable enough to change your bedtime by an hour—you do it every year—but if you tell yourself that you can’t adjust, you’ll undoubtedly prove yourself correct.
Changing the way you approach Internet marketing is no different. For some people, experimentation is a freeing, natural way to behave—they love this change. But for many of us, it’s scary. We don’t want to be wrong. We don’t want to be criticized. We just feel more comfortable doing it the old way.
For people that feel uncomfortable “doing it wrong quickly,” understanding that this is an adaptive change makes it easier. Understanding that this one won’t come naturally, that it will take some internal mental work, is the first step to making the shift. For more information on adaptive and technical changes, read Leadership on the Line
