| The key to any well implemented change is how well the change is embedded inside the minds, behavior and actions of the involved people. They MAYA-principle, Most Advanced Yet Acceptable, can be very useful for planning the change to maximize the embedding of the change. |  |
The MAYA-principle is the invention of Raymond Loewy, an industrial designer. He believed that, "The adult public's taste is not necessarily ready to accept the logical solutions to their requirements if the solution implies too vast a departure from what they have been conditioned into accepting as the norm." Calling the concept "beauty through function and simplification," Loewy spent over 50 years streamlining everything from postage stamps to spacecrafts. "I'm looking for a very high index of visual retention," Loewy explained of his logos. "We want anyone who has seen the logotype even fleetingly to never forget it." Among Loewy's highly visible logotype designs are those for Shell Oil Company, Exxon, Greyhound and Nabisco.
What we learned from the MAYA-principle is that in order for something/somebody to be well placed and ‘sticky’ in the mind of the target audience, the basic message must be simple, recognizable, and at the same time very different from past experiences.
To give an example. We’re in the process of developing a product for the time being called “Project Portfolio Management the Symbision Way”. We believe from our experiences that we have a way of implementing and managing the Project Portfolio of an organization that is both very effective and practical in terms of realizing the organization’s objectives.
Of course there are others that claim to be similar, even better, and/or that it is done already 30 years ago. This is like ‘fighting a battle uphill’, you need to be hugely outnumbering the others and accept high losses. Well Sun Tsu claimed that the best way to win is to position yourself in such a way that you don’t need to fight. And here we believe the MAYA-principle can be very useful.
When the objective is to implement a change, the best way to have it implemented is by not fighting the people that are confronted with the change. Of course there are plenty of alternatives to the one that is chosen to be implemented, possibly some of them even are much better. Of course any good change is sound in its basic and of course people did in the past sound things as well, thus it resembles what was done years and years ago. If we have to address this kind of energy we’re fighting a battle uphill.
The change should be communicated visually with a high degree of retention. The communicated change should be simple enough to directly grasp directly the essence and apply to every detail of the change. And yet, the change must be experienced as something unique as something invitingly new.
During my career I’ve seen some people hopelessly fail in well implementing a change. I’ve stood aside people implementing the seemingly impossible as it was the easiest thing in the world. Even in situations that were ‘tainted’ with many years of failure. One of the key differences was how the change was communicated. If ‘not advanced’ enough, people ‘resisted’ because they kept asking why this change and not something like …. If ‘not acceptable’ enough, people ‘resisted’ because they couldn’t grasp it directly and needed more ‘time’ and ‘understanding’. The change agents that were successful had an easy to grasp message that was very different from what most, if not all, knew.
A very good example is Demings’ PDSA-circle. Over 60 years later it is still an essential part of improvement and quality programmes. The PDSA is so different from anything else before and after. The PDSA it is so simple and yet very profound. The PDSA grasps you visually. All the key ingredients of Loewy that he formulated into one single term: MAYA; Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable.
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