Enable

Enabling is about understanding how the environment surrounding the change is either helping or hindering progress and then adapting it to make better outcomes easier and more likely.

Shape the Environment

Motivation sparks change, but it’s the environment that determines whether it succeeds. Too often, organisations rely on training, policies, or persuasion—yet people still default to old habits. Why? Because the environment hasn’t changed.

 

The Hidden Force Behind Behaviour

People naturally take the path of least resistance. If the new way of working is harder, slower, or more confusing than the old one, even the most motivated individuals will revert to what’s familiar.

In an organisational context, this means:

  • If meetings are still the default way to share updates, no one will adopt asynchronous collaboration tools.
  • If leaders say they want innovation but punish failure, risk-taking will disappear.
  • If employees are expected to “be more productive” but face endless bureaucracy, efficiency won’t improve.

The key to sustainable change isn’t asking people to work differently—it’s shaping the conditions so the new way becomes the natural way.

 

How to Shape the Environment for Change

Enabling change means removing obstacles and redesigning the surroundings so the desired behaviours happen effortlessly. This involves:

✅ Removing friction – Identify blockers that make change difficult and eliminate them.
✅ Aligning systems – Ensure processes, policies, and incentives support the new way of working.
✅ Making the new way easy – Design workflows and tools so that the desired behaviour becomes the default.
✅ Creating social proof – People follow what they see; make change visible and reinforce it through leadership actions.

 

Real-World Examples

Some of the most successful organisations use environmental design to drive change:

  • Microsoft restructured office layouts to encourage collaboration, leading to natural knowledge-sharing.
  • Pixar designed its campus so employees from different teams would cross paths daily, fostering creative serendipity.
  • Amazon’s leadership principles are built into hiring, performance management, and decision-making, ensuring cultural alignment at every level.

None of these changes relied solely on persuasion or training. They worked because the environment was deliberately shaped to reinforce the desired behaviours.

 

Why This Matters

Without environmental enablement, change efforts become uphill battles. People may try to adopt new ways of working, but if they face unnecessary friction, they’ll inevitably revert to what’s easiest.

Change sticks when the environment makes the right behaviour the natural behaviour.

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