“I’m thinking something you’re not thinking...”

Can you still remember this game? “I see something you don’t see, and the colour is...” Perhaps your children still play this game, while sitting on the back seat, on their way to the holiday destination or to grandfather and grandmother.

It’s a nice exercise to guess what the other has been looking at. Or even more so, an excellent exercise for reasoning what might have been significant enough for the other to choose as the object you would have difficulty in guessing.

Cognitive dissonance

Of course, the implementation of new work processes or a computer system is not a game. The only similarity, though a striking one, is the fact that the participants in both situations are equipped with their own experiences, associations and often specialized frames of mind. These form the basis for their intentions, decisions and behaviour.

Every individual deals with change differently, depending on his or her present ways of thinking. It’s not uncommon for him or her to experience unwelcome tension while gaining knowledge of (new) facts or opinions which contradict their own conviction. In psychology this is called cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957; Cooper, 2007).

Change

Bird’s-eye Cognitions helps to identify, evaluate and modify these dissonances in order to facilitate the implementation of the desired changes. Your organization cannot take a left turn, or right, without straightforwardly investing in its employees, taking notion of their thoughts and feelings regarding the charted change of course.

Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Cooper, J. (2007). Cognitive dissonance: 50 years of a classic theory. London: Sage publications.

(C) KJR 2008