The Work Begins Where Your Comfort Zone Ends

Change is often framed as a strategic exercise. New plans. New structures. New initiatives designed to fix problems that keep resurfacing. Whether or not fixing the same problems over and over again is a mark of success in said strategic exercises is a debate for another article.... so let's focus on the merits of change as strategy.

But how many change management teams and organizations actually understand the dynamics of change from the ground floor? What makes real change actually happen requires going beyond those who designed the strategy? Maybe the heads of the organization? Maybe senior leadership? But the rest of the organization becomes the illusive target audience to reach successfully.

One major way successful change is implemented starts with understanding the dynamics of how people work and interact with each other.

Every organization operates through work groups. Management teams. Project teams. Committees. Departments. These groups carry the real weight of decision making and execution. Over time, the patterns inside these groups shape what the organization becomes. It is when the heat is on, and stress is rising that the true culture of an organization shows up.

The question then becomes: if you do not like what you see, what can you do about it? If you want to change your organization, start by paying attention to work group dynamics.

Most teams struggle because people stay inside their comfort zones. People tend to avoid tension. They manage around disagreement. They preserve working relationships by staying polite rather than direct. They work around colleagues they do not trust instead of learning how to work with them.

The notion of "proper office ettiquette" or acting "professionally" usually end up functioning as invisible barriers for the necessary changes within organization to function better. Polite silence, deference to authority, and avoiding anything remotely close to explicit conflict is seen as orthodox and normal. These cultural norms in the office setting end up serving to preserve the status quo, yet do little to change when the status quo is not serving the organization and its members.

Another way of saying it might be this: Comfort maintains stability... but rarely produces progress.

To quote Orson Welles' character in The Third Man: "In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance.

In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace... and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

[The major difference here is that that "brotherly love" and "peace" are slowly eroding over time at the expense of necessary change.]

The real work begins when managers and executives stay engaged beyond what feels safe or "polite". Progress requires continuing the conversation when disagreement shows up. It requires working with people you do not fully agree with and sometimes do not like. It requires moving forward even when trust feels thin or incomplete.

But in order to do that, one must begin to expand their capacity to handle what is beyond their comfort zone within the group dynamics of how people work together. Can your teams disagree with their manager? With each other? Can middle management question the strategy of the senior leadership team? Can errors and failures on the ground floor be called out by those who are not directly responsible? Observing your organization's group dynamics - especially under pressure - can give you the key insights as to how work gets done (or not done, in many cases). That, in turn, will give you additional insight as to how well your organization will tolerate change.

Final Thoughts:

Change today is less about better plans and more about whether people can work through tension together.

When the same problems keep returning, it is rarely a failure of strategy. More often, the organization lacks the capacity to stay engaged when things become uncomfortable. That capacity lives in everyday group dynamics at work.

In meetings. In disagreements. In who feels able to speak and who does not.

If what you are observing gives you pause, the work is not to push harder. It is to strengthen how people work together when comfort no longer serves progress.

This is the work we do at Well•Led. We help organizations see the group dynamics shaping their ability to change and build the capacity required to adapt rather than repeat.

Remember: the work begins where the comfort zone ends.