Myth 2: the burning platform

On the 6th of July, 1988 superintendent engineer Andy Mochan awoke to find that his oil rig, the Piper Alpha was on fire. There has been a massive explosion on the six-storey North Sea oil rig. Andy was faced with an unenviable decision: stay on the burning platform and face the very high prospect of burning to death or risk a 150-foot jump into freezing waters. He jumped and survived.

The expression ‘bringing platform’ originates from Andy’s awful moment of decision. It has entered the lexicon of management-speak to describe a situation where the status quo is no longer tenable and radical change is required.

The burning platform epitomises the second common strategy we commonly use to motivate change: fear.

Alan Deutchman in Change or Die (a fear-base title if ever there was one) notes that our three go-to approaches are facts (see Myth no 1), fear, and force.

One of the clearest examples of these approaches working together is found on cigarette packaging. On the way to lighting up, the smoker will see horrendous statistics of liver damage and heart disease (facts) and images of amputated limbs and disfigured organs (fear). The stats and images are, of course, designed to evoke an emotional response (force). Other acts of force have included raising the price of cigarettes, tightening ease of access, and reducing the areas where one is allowed to smoke.

Church-related change might seem like a very different kettle of fish than anti-smoking campaigns, but it’s not hard to see the trinity of facts, fear, and force at work. “Our giving used to be here, now it’s here” (facts). “If you don’t give more we’ll lose our pastor. You don’t want that do you? (fear)”. “If we keep going this way the diocese/presbytery/Union/other central governing body will shut us down” (force).

To the person giving the burning platform type ultimatum, it’s hard to see how fear could ever be a poor change motivator. But it is.

Deutchman demonstrates the motivating power of fear through the example of patients, who due to poor health choices undergo heart surgery to bypass blocked arteries. Surgeries like coronary bypass grafts or angioplasty surgeries are only ever temporary fixes. Post-surgery doctors will sit patients down and tell them that if they don’t stop smoking, drinking, or eating so much, reduce their stress levels, and exercise more the pain will return.

But very few manage to do so.

“If you look at people after coronary-artery bypass grafting two years later, ninety percent of them have not changed their lifestyle… Even though they know they have a very bad disease and they know they should change their lifestyle, for whatever reason, they can’t.”

Fear tends to be a motivating force for change only for a short period of time. After all, it’s difficult to think about the prospect of pain or death for very long. It’s too frightening, so our unconscious minds reach for denial, idealisation, projection, or rationalisation.

The other thing that the burning platform misunderstands about change is that crises tend to make us feel more powerless and hopeless. We can see this clearly in the example of heart disease patients. Surgery is a stopgap, not a cure. The cure is for the person to make the necessary changes to their lives (exercise, quitting smoking, a healthy diet, etc.). In other words, to take responsibility for their lives, utilise their agency, and feel a sense of hope and optimism for the future.

Deutchman argues that paradoxically, the arrival of an expert person who has the power to make the pain go away, rather than encouraging the taking of responsibility, only exacerbates a feeling of helplessness.

I hope the parallels to church-related change are evident. Fear alone is a poor strategy for congregational change because, while it may create short-term urgency, it rarely leads to lasting transformation. Fear causes paralysis when churches need to learn, conserve their energies, and think creatively. Fear might bring about short-term compliance, but it mitigates against the taking of responsibility. Fear undermines a sense of hope and optimism for the future.

That is not to say that fear is unhelpful. In the 1950s, organisational psychologist Kurt Lewin argued that change leaders needed to balance two forms of organisational anxiety: survival and learning anxiety. In order for meaningful change to occur, the group must feel a sense of ’survival anxiety’. This is a helpful and necessary fear. The leader needs to carefully point toward uncomfortable realities and gently allow people to feel a sense of discomfort with the status quo.

However, if corporate anxiety grows too high, ‘learning anxiety’ is triggered. Learning anxiety occurs when we feel psychologically unsafe, when we feel that our effectiveness, self-esteem, or even our identities themselves are under threat. This kind of fear provokes defensiveness and a fight-or-flight response. When learning anxiety is triggered, we are incapable of taking on new information.

Lewin’s protege, Edgar Schein, puts it this way: “The key to effective change management then becomes the ability to manage the amount of threat produced by disconfirming data with enough psychological safety to allow the change target to accept the information, feel the survival anxiety, and become motivated to change.”

In other words, the leader’s job is to help manage anxiety. Too little, and change will not occur; too much, and people become too overwhelmed. The key is fostering an environment where people feel challenged but supported, aware of the urgency yet hopeful about the future. Change grounded in hope and ownership is far more effective than change driven by fear.

Sources: Kurt Lewin’s Change Theory in the Field and in the Classroom, Edgar H Schien; Change or Die, Alan Deutchman.