Change vs. Stability in Science and in Careers

Times change, people change. We all realize this very basic concept. Yet we humans love the idea that we might be able to hold back the instability of change in favor of defaulting to stability and security.  Freedom as the universal human longing was a regularly mentioned component of George W. Bush’s thoughts, a great line which no doubt earned the speechwriter an extra day off. As romantic and lyrical as that line was, it was also wrong. The universal longing embedded in our DNA, even over a desire for freedom, is the desire for security, for stability and for the absence of threats.

This is true even in the face of the excitement and positive anticipation that often comes along with change. In science there is a similar apparent conflict between such highly regarded theoretical “longings” or established “rules,” much like Newton’s First Law of Motion — inertia, that is.

We keep moving along, in physics and in life, in a similar direction until we get banged into by an outside force. When that happens inertia — or maintaining allegiance to the idea that tomorrow could well be the same as today and yesterday — is disrupted by the force of the change which has just struck us. 

Many changes affect us in scary, harmful ways, such as disease, natural disasters, opening the envelope containing our latest property tax bill, or receiving a “Dear John” or “Dear Jane” letter, etc.

Others are amazing, wonderful and smile-inducing. Receiving that long hoped for promotion, enjoying a brilliant retirement, witnessing the birth of your child or grandchild, seeing the rings of Saturn… and so much more.  Change may be inherently fickle, at least from our perspectives as rather insignificant little creatures, but it can still be exciting and life changing.

On the other hand, science brings us the “Second Law of Thermodynamics” and it’s corollary, the “Law of Entropy.”

These principles shout at us: “Hey, wait a minute, everything in the universe eventually moves from order to disorder.” So, which “longing” wins in the gladiatorial contest between the love of stability and resistance to change versus the inevitability that we are doomed to seeing even our most stable systems decline into ever more instability and increasing chaos?

The answer, whether we like it or not, is that the winner is change! 

All you have to do is look in the mirror regularly over a period of years to begin noticing the appearance of a wrinkle here and there, gray hairs or in the HR Doctor’s case, the increasing absence of hair from the top of my head.

It is this way not only with my hair line, but also with organizations and professions, such as local government human resources.

The HR Doctor’s professional career was fortunate enough to begin in a momentous year of change and therefore some insecurity: 1972.

Before that time, the federal and state governments did not impose collective bargaining obligations on local governments.

The great Civil Rights law of 1964 did not apply to government entities.

There were no related obligations to prevent age discrimination or to safeguard the rights of the disabled or to pay overtime or minimum wages and a great deal more.

Human resources or at the time, “personnel,” was primarily a large collection of filing cabinets for records.  The staff members were performing overwhelmingly clerical functions at a tactical level.

Any inclusion of the personnel director (if there was one) in a top-level staff meeting or critical decision-making, was likely more accidental than intentional.

Instead, local government human resources was enshrined within petrified granite monoliths which were felt to be unchangeable. The principal example was civil service rules and regulations. Of course, there were also the concepts of bureaucratic hierarchies and one-way, downward-flowing authority. These were all well explained and still studied by students of public administration because of the writings of Herr Professor Doktor Max Weber in 19th-century Prussia.

Needless to say, those perched securely at the top of the hierarchy were almost invariably male and Caucasian.

However, fortunately for my personal HR joys and many adventures, much of that began to change after 1972 with infusions of changes to the law such as those described above but also social forces calling for proactive civil rights changes and increasing pressures to question the all-powerful civil service rules and regulations.

Adjusting to the new emerging realities could not happen effectively with a passive, comatose and reactive personnel system.

Change — major change — had to come in the form of a more assertive, strategic and trusted human resources system, often sitting right next to the CEO, CAO or whatever the top manager’s title was. It also required an “HR leader” with a far different set of “KSAs” (knowledge, skills and abilities) than merely understanding the importance of alphabetizing files.

Suffice it to say, by luck, blessing, perhaps a bit of KSA thrown in, this is just when a younger, thinner and more long-haired (i.e., actually having hair) intelligence officer entered the civilian job market searching for how to succeed in public service. 

City and county officials often didn’t understand how to implement the winds of change beginning to blow.  That created a great opportunity for a relatively overconfident young captains of intelligence to come into a local government office and say “I can lead that effort! Follow me!” The latter phrase is also the motto of U.S. Army infantry school.

After all, I had been trained and had gained experience in interviewing and eliciting information, conducting investigations and “connecting the dots” in an intelligence agency that was not at all dissimilar to interviewing, testing and analyzing in local government. 

Being able to manage critical incidents at work, such as complaints of bullying, unlawful discrimination or even workplace violence, requires skills also not too dissimilar from the management of critical incidents involving forces of terror and the need to anticipate and control those forces experienced by an intelligence officer.

Then too, there was the needed ability to conduct articulate and well laid out briefings, presentations and training seminars for colleagues and visitors to an intelligence agency — once again not at all dissimilar to the educational development and staff training needs in a public agency undergoing change.

Looking back at nearly five decades of public service, the HR Doctor finds that the excitement of change and the ability to step up and say, “Follow me!” is still a powerful tool in the inventory of a confident public administrator.

What all this means is learning the key concept of “control of uncertainty.”  How valuable indeed is that skill for success as a mom, dad, public administrator or for that matter, a human being. 

How wonderful it would be for that to be a mandatory subject in schools, beginning in pre-school.

That “control of uncertainty” concept is especially needed when a young kid is starting a career, or an older kid is just changing careers.

A final ingredient in that recipe for success is having mentors; in fact, seeking them out and asking for advice and help. Change in my own experience was the gradual evolution I saw during my career from regularly seeking out advice and help in human resources and public administration generally to being asked in turn by others to be a mentor and guide helping them successfully travel on their own personal life journeys.

I invite the reader of this article to go back and start again from the beginning — reading it this time from the perspective of being a mom or dad or grandma or grandpa or a champion of helping girls succeed in an age never more full of opportunities. 

So much has changed, including my receding hairline, but despite the “change versus stability” debate, some things remain thankfully the same…if only one comes to understand and appreciate them.