Do You Know the Logical Levels for Successful Change? (Part 1)

When people say, “Well, at one level I believe this, but at another level, it’s this,” it shows that they are thinking about issues at different levels. Whether they know it or not, they are referring to logical levels of thinking or change.

There are six levels that I hold as important in whatever change work I do. They can be useful for understanding change from an individual or an organizational point of view. Let me explain…

• Environment: change at this level implies making a change in one’s environment; it could involve bringing in an organizational specialist to rearrange an office environment in support of a mission or job, or it could be as simple as reorganizing furniture, adjusting the temperature or making ergonomic changes.
• Behaviors: this addresses what you do; to create behavioral changes you might bring in the same organizational person to teach a set of behaviors to maximize the environmental changes, which could range from new methods of doing simple tasks to things such as assertiveness training or behavioral intervention.
• Capabilities: this refers to how you organize your behaviors—the strategies people come up with to carry out behaviors, whether for work or play; it involves thinking at a higher level about how behaviors are organized. (For some the problem is that they don’t have a strategy on this level. For example, many people claim they don’t know how to make decisions, but the actual problem is that they don’t know how to put one set of criteria ahead of another; they don’t have a strategy for making their decisions.)

Before I describe the rest, keep in mind that there is a hierarchy to these levels. These first three—environment, behaviors and capabilities—are the lower levels of thinking. It’s tougher to successfully make a change if you intervene at a lower level, at least in terms of making systemic changes. I’ll share information about the upper levels in my next post.

In the meanwhile, can you think of a change you’d like to make at one of these levels? Is there something in YOUR environment that needs to be adjusted to support your goals?

P.S. Do you want to reprint this article? Please do. Just be sure that it remains intact and includes the following bio.

About Terry: Terry Hickey, M.S., is a Certified NLP Professional Coach, Business Trainer and Consultant, a Certified Master Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming and the co-owner of NLP Advantage Group. Originator of the Belief Breakthrough Method™, Terry specializes in teaching coaches and entrepreneurs how to rapidly resolve limiting beliefs about wealth and success. His tips and strategies can help you launch yourself into the future you want… NOW. http://terryhickey.com/