What Buying a MacBook Pro Taught Me About Leading Change

As a leader, I’m usually on the side of promoting change. Not for the sake of change itself, but if something is going to make things better, I want to do it. I’m rarely satisfied with the status quo.

I recently learned a lesson about change itself when I upgraded my laptop.

You see, for the last six years (yes, I said six years) I’ve had an Apple iBook G4 laptop that has served me well. It got me through the second half of seminary and it’s been my main computer since I started pastoring four years ago. It fits me well. There are about four letters on the keyboard that are no longer recognizable from wear. It’s been my sidekick as I’ve traveled, used it to give dozens and dozens of presentations, write all my sermons on it…it’s grown on me. And I love it.

Recently, though, Apple released an upgraded line to their MacBook Pro series and I decided that it was finally time to take the plunge on a new one. The older one was still working, but it was beginning to run out of space. I’d been doing the dance of moving stuff to an external hard drive for some time, but now I wanted something I could finally just use without worrying about space and such.

So I bought the 15′ MacBook Pro.

I opened it, and immediately became drunk with the new laptop smell. Ahhhhhhh. I recognized the smell because my old iBook had it when I first got it. Everything opened up quickly. I could tell that this was a significant upgrade and was really excited.

But then I started to use it a little more and noticed a few things. The keyboard buttons were spaced slightly more far apart then the keyboard on my iBook. In me geekiness, I felt a little frustrated, to be honest, because I felt like my hand had to build up the muscle memory of where the keys were again. So that was one thing. Also, and this is a really small thing, the trackpad on my iBook had a certain “smoothness” because of the wear, and the texture of the trackpad on the MacBook Pro felt slightly different, which I wasn’t used to.

It’s almost embarrassing to admit this, but I would go back every once in a while to the iBook to work on stuff. And whenever I got on it, it just felt like home. And feeling comfortable and “like home” is something that’s intangible and really difficult to replace. It felt safe and it fit my hands perfectly.

Poor me, right? Seemingly complaining about something that’s actually really, really nice, just cause I wasn’t quite used to it.

So here are some things I began to think about relating to leading change. And this is stuff I had sometimes read about in books, but since I was always the one leading it, had rarely experienced the feelings behind being the recipient of change.

1. Acknowledge that someone might give a reason for opposing something, but the real reason might be something more subtle. It’s tough to  describe what “home” feels like. It just feels safe. You like it. In my mind I rationally knew that the new Macbook was way better than the old way, but still I kinda yearned for the old one. If you were to ask me why, I couldn’t probably have given you a logical reason.

And that’s really important to understand. People are complex and complicated and become attached to all sorts of things for different reasons, which may not be obvious. And if you ask them for a good reason why you shouldn’t change, they’ll perhaps fish for a reason. Any reason to not change. And they’ll give you one, because saying that it just “doesn’t feel like home” doesn’t seem like a concrete enough reason for us.

2. Encourage people to give change a chance. Sometimes a long chance. When I first changed over, I was immediately awed by the new machine. For a day. The honeymoon was really short for me. And then I was like, “ok, i’m good, I experienced it….now where’s my iBook!”

I think people do this often. They’ll try something, and when it does not immediately meet their expectations, they want to ditch it.

I noticed this recently in our change to a children’s church program. (I wrote about what we did to launch ours here.) I knew some people were skeptical from the beginning. We started with a huge bang. Lots of kids. A month later our numbers were dipping and some people were ready to throw in the towel and move back to our previous system. Thankfully our numbers have come back up. Not to where they were opening weekend, but much higher than they were before we instituted the change.

So if you’re going to try something, try it. Encourage the people to commit some time to it. Don’t go with your first reaction. Give it the time it needs to germinate. If I would have gone with my gut reaction, I would have sold the 15′ and stuck with the old iBook, or have gotten a 12′ Macbook Pro because I was used to seeing things on a smaller screen.

3. Help people to process what they’re feeling on an emotional level. What will they miss? Try to probe further. How does it make them feel? I know this probably sounds like mumbo-jumbo-Dr. Phil stuff, but I think there’s something there. And I’ve never really done this with people I’ve led in the past. Don’t know if it’s the necessary thing, even. But I know that there’s a lot of emotions related to change. And I think if you probe further, you’ll actually get closer to the true issue.

So where am I now? I’m loving the new laptop. It now feels like home. A fresh, zippy, clean…and slightly expensive one, but a home nonetheless.

Where’s the old laptop? Sold.

So what about you? For those on the receiving end of implemented change, do these points seem fair? Do they make sense? For those that lead change, what would you add to it? What have you learned about change?

[image from Apple.com]

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