Change Cycles

From an academic perspective I have noticed something over the course of the pandemic which I call Four Phase Change Cycles. First let's note that the human mind already categorizes seasonal changes this way:

1. Winter is a time of stasis, were we huddle down and live off of stored resources, brutally enduring the status quo whatever that may be.
2. Spring is a new time of opportunity, were we are able to go out and explore the changes that may have happened while we were hiding in Winter.
3. Summer is when we are following through on our best opportunities we discovered in the Spring, and discarding the others.
4. Fall is when we finish up our year's work. Harvest time is when we collect the bounty that we previously worked for. This prepares us to survive another Winter.

The most obvious Four Phase Change Cycle is the "OODA Loop." OODA loops were discovered as the US Military learned to train fighter pilots better, and this same OODA Loop concept is now sometimes used to train other types of soldiers, police and security. OODA Loops give us a model for how humans make split second decisions:

1. Observe: this is status quo, just paying attention to what is going on in your environment.
2. Orient: when a threat emerges in your environment, you consider the implications this for has you.
3. Decide: this is when you decide what you are going to do about the threat.
4. Act: this is when you react to the threat.

Three points about OODA Loops. First in an emergent situation it is important to be able to course correct quickly based on new information: when fighting against an opponent whoever is making decisions faster will have an advantage, because the chaos of combat requires us to adapt quickly, or in other words "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face." Second the number one job of training is to make your OODA Loops faster: if you have trained a low kick thousands of times, you don't have to think about how to do the low kick once you have decided that's what you need to do. Third is that in a split second decision, the Winter or "status quo" is observe, Spring or "new opportunity" is Orient, Summer or "following through" is Decide, and Fall or "harvest" is Act.

But this also applies to group development. "Tuckman's Stages of Change" identifies four inevitable phases a group will go through in order to do a job effectively for a any real length of time:

1. Forming is the honeymoon phase where everyone is polite and tries to stay out of each other's way.
2. Storming is the choas that happens when people get comfortable enough to start being really honest with each other about their disagreements and personality differences.
3. Norming is when the group creates ground rules and processes to get things done as they resolve disagreements and determine what issues have to be compromised on.
4. Performing is the amazing work a group that has been through the first three stages together can get done.

BEWARE THE NAYSAYERS who want to add extra phases to this. For example people want to end an "adjourning" phase, but that is delusional because when groups terminate it is usually with very little warning. Beyond that it is more likely a Performing group will have new membership throwing them back into the Forming stage than it is that the group will terminate. These change cycles evolve their subject.

And I will go one step further than all of the above and dare say that the Transtheoretical Model of Change, also known as "stages of change" in addictions counseling, also only has 4 phases:

1. Maintenance: status quo, whatever your habits already are.
2. Contemplation: you realize one of you habits is bad and it needs to go.
3. Preparation: you put everything together you need to in order to get ready to quit.
4. Action: you stop your habit. When your habit has been stopped for a long time, you find yourself back in the Maintenance stage with a new status quo with healthier habits.

Some naysayers feel that "Maintenance" is a 5th stage and the 1st stage should be called "precontempaltion" (aka "denial.") However if we see you as a continuously evolving individual we do not define you buy your original bad habit. Instead we recognize you have moved on, possibly to quit another bad habit you have. Other naysayers want to say there is another stage called "relapse" which is just as irrelevant to this model as "adjourning" is to Tuckman's model above. (Of course things don't go smoothly, but that's exactly why adding another phase is a bad idea: complicating the model doesn't keep unexpected things from happening.)

And thus we see that coming from very different disciplines, humans generally construct and make effective use of models of change with four phases:

1. Winter: maintenance, forming, observe.
2. Spring: contemplation, storming, orient.
3. Summer: preparation, norming, decide.
4. Fall: action, performing, act.

I get impatient with people who develop a victim mindset from having unrealistic expectations for change. The world is rapidly becoming a better place but of course that is messy. Have some perspective.