I had a moment on the treadmill the other morning. Wanting to try something other than chewing time at an incline, I scrolled through the Sprint 8 programs. I even picked a beginner program, but bumped the intensity just a little bit.
With a 4.6 mph jog, the program wasn’t crazy but the short warmup wasn’t enough to get me ready.
After the jog I felt like I couldn’t catch my breath. Although I was in the rest period and barely walking, my brain decided it was in trouble and I needed to stop immediately. I had to check my breathing and start touching and naming the buttons on the panel in front of me.
This wasn’t weakness or too much effort. A jog at that speed is very comfortable. It was my nervous system doing its job when faced with demand without any time to prepare.
Forcing change on someone does the exact same thing that program did to me that morning. With no warmup, there’s no warning or context, just a new tool, way of working, or org chart dropped on a Monday morning with a demand to keep up. Then like me, you’re surprised when what comes back isn’t performance. It’s skipping the next sprint, going back to walking at incline, or stepping away altogether.
As leaders we call that resistance to change, but I don’t think that’s what it is. It’s fight or flight wearing a golf shirt.
I had a writing workshop leader who talked about how it was evolutionary that the brain interpreted the unknown as danger. How it knows there’s no tiger inside the cave, but outside all bets are off.
Nobody’s nervous system asks for permission to react. Mine didn’t before it decided that treadmill was a threat. And your team’s isn’t going to before they decide your new initiative is a danger either, especially if all they’ve been given is the demand and none of the warmup.
So, what calms that threat response down? It’s not motivation. I wasn’t missing any drive to take on that Sprint 8 session. And it’s not a pep talk. I’d made my decision on the way to the gym. In my experience, it’s two things: awareness, or knowing what’s coming before it shows up, and input. It’s having some real say in what’s happening, even if just time to react.
Those aren’t soft or touchy-feely additions to the project plan. They’re the warmup. They are the things that tell your organization’s nervous system that it has time to prepare and there are no tigers on the other side of the cave.
I knew that was the fix for my own body before the next sprint. The next day, I added a few minutes of incline walking before switching programs. I added a warmup. That solution was clear once I wasn’t in mid-panic.
It’s less obvious at work. Change initiatives have deadlines and those deadlines are often urgent. So leaders skip the warmup, tell their teams to run, and then are surprised by the distress.
The answer isn’t to slow everything down, because some of those sprints are necessary and the deadlines real. But a hard sprint goes better with a bit of warmup. Even a forced change goes better with a little awareness and input.
The next time you need your team to sprint, what warmup are you giving them first?