cameron and green making-sense-of-change-management

The underpinning theoryConscious and unconscious competence and incompetenceAnother way of looking at what happens when you learn something newis to view it from a Gestalt perspective. The Gestalt psychologists suggestedthat people have a worldview that entails some things being in the foregroundand other things being in the background of their consciousness.To illustrate this, the room where I am writing this looks out on to agravel path which leads into a cottage garden sparkling with the sunshining on the frost-covered shrubs. Before I chose to look up, the gardenwas tucked back into the recesses of my consciousness. (I doubt whetherit was even in yours.) By focusing attention on it I brought it into the foregroundof my consciousness. Likewise all the colours in the garden are ofequal note, until someone mentions white and I immediately start tonotice the snowdrops, the white narcissi and the white pansies. Theyhave come into my foreground.Now in those examples it does not really matter what is fully conscious ornot. However in the example of driving a new car for the first time somethingelse is happening. Assuming that I am an experienced driver, many ofthe aspects of driving, for me, are unconscious. All of these aspects I hopefullycarry out competently. So perhaps I can drive for many miles on amotorway, safe in the knowledge that a lot of the activities I am performingI am actually doing unconsciously. We might say I am unconsciously competent.However, as soon as I am in the new situation of an unfamiliar car Irealize that many of the things I took for granted I cannot now do as well asbefore. I have become conscious of my incompetence. Through some trialand error and some practice and some experience I manage – quiteconsciously – to become competent again. But it has required focus andattention. All these tasks have been in the forefront of my world and myconsciousness. It will only be after a further period of time that they recedeto the background and I become unconsciously competent again (Figure 1.3).Of course there is another cycle: not the one of starting at unconsciouscompetence, but one of starting at unconscious incompetence! This iswhere you do not know what you do not know, and the only way of realizingis by making a mistake (and reflecting upon it), or when someonekind enough and brave enough tells you. From self-reflection or fromothers’ feedback your unconscious incompetence becomes conscious, andyou are able to begin the cycle of learning.16