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Overcoming Resistance to Change in the Workplace

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Overcoming Resistance to Change in the Workplace

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

Change is an inevitable part of today’s workplace. Whether driven by external forces such as technology, or internal factors such as restructuring, it’s important to know how to effectively manage resistance to change in the workplace. Employees have their own preferred ways of carrying out their job, and asking them to change the way they’re working can be disruptive. Here we will explore some key strategies for managing resistance to change, illustrated with case study examples.

Understand the Underlying Cause

The first step to overcoming resistance to change in the workplace is to understand exactly why employees are resisting the change. It could be due to a lack of information or understanding, simply being comfortable with the status quo, or it could be driven by office politics or a fear of the unknown. Once the underlying cause is understood it is easier to develop a plan to successfully manage the resistance.

For example, when Cupcake Company rolled out a new online customer ordering platform, employees were hesitant to get on board with the change. After flagging this resistance with management, they realized that employees didn’t have enough meaningful information about how the new system worked. They quickly organized training sessions to explain the new process, and started to monitor who was using the system to fine-tune it where needed.

Engage and Involve Everyone Who Will Be Affected

It’s important to engage and involve employees who will be affected by the change. This will help to build a sense of ownership and responsibility for the change, and will give them the opportunity to provide feedback and suggestions for how the change could be better managed.

For example, when the Retail Store began introducing self-checkout into its stores, they gathered a team of employees from diverse backgrounds to be ‘change champions’. These change champions were responsible for educating their peers about the benefits of the new system and encouraging them to adopt it. They also gave active feedback to the management team about any issues or problems they were facing. This approach helped to ensure that everyone involved was bought into the changes and invested in their success.

Communicate and Promote the Benefits

Employees will be more likely to accept a change if they understand the benefits of it. Companies should communicate and promote the benefits of the proposed change before it is implemented, and keep the lines of communication open throughout to ensure that employees are kept informed of developments.

For example, when a manufacturer was introducing robotic automation, they used a mix of in-person and virtual events to communicate the benefits of the new system to their workforce. They showed their employees how the new system could help free up their time for more value-added tasks, and offered skills development and training opportunities for those who wanted to gain experience in the new area. By focusing on the tangible value that employees could get from the new system, they were able to create a more positive outlook on the change.

Create a Supportive Environment

A supportive environment is essential to help employees embrace change. This can involve mentorship programs, workshops, and activities that allow employees to practice their new skills and exchange ideas on how to optimise the change.

For example, when a tech company launched its new cloud software, they dedicated a team of “change ambassadors” who acted as role models and mentors for other employees. They held regular knowledge sharing sessions and open forums to discuss ideas about how to make the most of the new system. The ambassadors also ran practice sessions for those who were new to the software and led workshops to help employees build confidence in their new skills. This approach created an open and supportive environment in which employees were comfortable to try out the new system and learn from their mistakes.

Building a Culture of Change

Forming a culture of change takes time, but it is worth investing in. Management should encourage employees to take ownership of the change and be proactive in creating new opportunities to optimize the system. This could involve setting incentives for employees who come up with innovative solutions, or implementing process improvement initiatives that allow everyone in the organization to contribute to the change process.

For example, when an accounting firm began introducing automation, they implemented a quarterly “change feedback” program. This program allowed employees to provide feedback and suggestions on how the automation process could be improved, and rewards those who came up with the most innovative ideas. By inviting the entire organization to be part of the change initiative, the firm was able to better manage resistance to change and speed up the transition process.

Conclusion

Change is often disruptive, but it is also an essential part of staying competitive and innovative. Through understanding the underlying cause, engaging and involving everyone who will be affected, communicating and promoting the benefits, creating a supportive environment, and building a culture of change, companies can successfully manage resistance to change in the workplace and find new ways to optimize their systems.

SPECIAL BONUS: Braden Kelley’s Problem Finding Canvas can be a super useful starting point for doing design thinking or human-centered design.

“The Problem Finding Canvas should help you investigate a handful of areas to explore, choose the one most important to you, extract all of the potential challenges and opportunities and choose one to prioritize.”

Image credit: Pexels

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Measuring Change Readiness

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Measuring Change ReadinessAre you and your organization ready for change?

Too often organizations define the change effort they want to pursue without first identifying whether there are people, resources, legislation, etc. present that must be in place before the change effort can begin. We will explore the circumstances you may want to explore before beginning any change effort and the areas to explore as potential prerequisites to the change program and its eventual success.

During the course of any change initiative many different challenges will appear, and the most successful change efforts will anticipate those challenges and have a plan for dealing with them. Part of that anticipation begins with identifying how ready the organization is for change.

The Change Planning Toolkit™ is designed to assist your change planning team by making the planning process easier with its collection of 50+ frameworks, methodologies and other tools.

One of the keys to change planning success is carefully identifying the prerequisites for change, including:

  1. What must we know? (Knowledge)
  2. What must we have? (Tools)
  3. What must be completed? (Foundation)

This information is captured in one of the worksheets in the toolkit.

One other concept we should stop and discuss briefly is the idea of change saturation. This concept captures the idea that organizations in general, and certain individuals in specific, can only absorb so much change at one time. One frequent occurrence with change efforts is the situation where more than one project or larger change effort may require the same human, financial, physical, information or other resources at the same time. To become aware of this situation and to enable you to work to mitigate the effects of change saturation, you will want to build a heat map identifying the different timing, duration, and intensity of the different requirements all of the different projects and change efforts will place on the different types of resources within the organization. This too is a prerequisite.

Another prerequisite for change is having a deep understanding for what the current state looks like, including having answers for the following:

  • Who is feeling the pain? Pushing for the change?
  • What is the pain caused by the current state?
  • Where is the bulk of the change likely to take place?
  • When did the current state start causing pain?
  • Why is the change being pursued

These questions can be asked and answered during your change planning session, but they must be asked and the answers must be integrated into your examination of your readiness for this change BEFORE you actually begin the change.

An additional prerequisite for change is also having a deep understanding for what the desired state will look like, including answers for the following:

  • Who are we making this change for? Who will feel the greatest benefit from this change?
  • Where will the resources and support come from?
  • When do we need/want to complete the change process by? Is there a legal deadline?
  • What solution would we like to see in place?
  • Why is this solution better than the status quo?

Finally, to be ready to pursue a change the organization must have people in place to look after each of the Five Keys to Successful Change and should be familiar with both the Architecting the Organization for Change framework and my PCC Change Readiness Framework (these are three of the free downloads from the toolkit).

My PCC Change Readiness Framework focuses on the psychology of key groups surrounding the identified change, the capabilities needed to successfully execute the change, and the organization’s capacity to tackle this change effort (along with everything else).

PCC Change Readiness Framework

You will notice that I don’t speak about organizational psychology or culture in my PCC Change Readiness Framework. The reason I don’t highlight culture in the same way that many other people do is that in today’s more social, customer-centric business, we must look more broadly than the typical inward focus of company culture when it comes to identifying the readiness of not only employees, but leaders, customers, and partners too. Inevitably many of our change efforts will have some impact on one or more external groups (possibly even non-profit entities and one or more governments).

You will notice that within the PSYCHOLOGY box there is a common focus on the mindsets, attitudes, beliefs and expectations of the individuals. Culture is incorporated into the psychology realm by focusing on what the shared understandings are around the potential change, but more broadly too. And, finally you will notice that my PCC Change Readiness Framework highlights the need for successful change efforts to move towards gaining commitment to the change from leadership, acceptance of the change by employees, and a desire for the change from customers and partners.

Within the CAPABILITY box of my PCC Change Readiness Framework we must investigate whether our change effort has any regulatory or statutory implications and whether we are ready to adapt, adopt or influence the changes necessary in this sphere. We must also ask ourselves a series of questions:

  1. “Do we need to get permission from anyone to do this?”
  2. “What knowledge, skills, and abilities needed for this change do we already possess?”
  3. “What knowledge, skills, and abilities needed for this change do we need to acquire?”
  4. “What relationships do we possess that will be useful in advancing the change?”
  5. “What relationships do we need to build to help advance the change?”
  6. “What are the enablers of making this change successful?”

Within the CAPACITY box we have to look at where our resources are approaching, or have already achieved, change saturation. This means they are unable to productively participate in any more change efforts or adopt any more change. But we also have to look at the availability of our resources:

  1. Human
  2. Financial
  3. Physical
  4. Information
  5. Executive Sponsors
  6. Space in our desired communication channels

It is easy to take for granted that the organization will have the capacity to undertake your change effort, but often there are capacity constraints that you will run into, especially as the pace and volume of change increases inside an organization. The one that is easiest to overlook and fail to plan for, is making sure that you’re going to be able to communicate your change messages in your desired messaging channels (they may already be full).

There is a worksheet that goes with the PCC Change Readiness Framework that will help you capture information around the:

  • History
  • Capability
  • Capacity
  • Partners
  • Context
  • Leadership
  • Employees
  • Customers
  • Shared Understanding
  • Strategic Alignment (Commitment)
  • Cultural Alignment (Acceptance)
  • Brand Alignment (Desire)

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’ve gone ahead and created a free downloadable flipbook PDF for people to grab. It was inspired by Braden’s article titled Change the World – Step Two, which was the follow-up predictably to Change the World – Step One.

PCC Change Readiness Framework Flipbook

You will find these companion tools for the PCC Change Readiness Framework in the Change Planning Toolkit™ to download for printing and use in your collaborative exploration of your change readiness.

Get Your Copy of Charting ChangeIn my next book Charting Change we will investigate additional aspects of change readiness and have a special section from one of my invited guest experts in the book, Beth Montag Schmaltz of PeopleFirm looking at several topics including change fatigue, where the change threshold lies, why people resist change, how to reduce change fatigue, how to build change capability, what change capable employees look like, and how you can embed change behavior into the very fabric of your organization.

The book is available for pre-order, and has received several strong endorsements, so I hope you’ll pick up a copy (or one for each member of your team). You can find more information on the Charting Change book page.

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Change Resistance is Not Inevitable

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Change Resistance is Not InevitableThe idea that people always resist change is a lie, and it is extremely damaging to organization’s seeking to increase their organizational agility.

The truth is that people only resist changes that they either do not understand or for which they do not interpret there to be benefits great enough to offset the costs of their participation.

The truth is also that the natural response to a potential change in an organization is greatly impacted by the level of trust in an organization.

While it is a lie that change resistance is inevitable, it is true that executing change is hard. If it wasn’t, 70 percent of change efforts wouldn’t fail, but they do. There are many reasons for this, including the fact that most change efforts are communicated not explained.

Let’s look at definitions of both words from Dictionary.com to see the root of this difference:

Communication: A document or message imparting news, views, information, etc.

Explanation: A mutual declaration of the meaning of words spoken, actions, motives, etc., with a view to adjusting a misunderstanding or reconciling differences

You’ll notice here a big difference between the two mindsets – seeking to communicate versus seeking to explain. When you focus on explaining the change, you are focusing on ensuring UNDERSTANDING, and when people understand the change, and the purpose for the change they will be more likely to support the change.

We don’t resist change, WE RESIST THAT WHICH WE DON’T UNDERSTAND.

One great way for increasing your ability to explain change is the use of a tool like the Change Planning Canvas™ to involve more people in the planning of a change, which increases the number of people capable of explaining the change and its purpose, plus it provides a visual map of the change effort that explains the change at a glance.

This is not say that even when people completely understand a potential change and the purpose for it, that they still might not not fight against it, but they will be more likely to support the change.
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Change Planning Canvas

(For Illustration Purposes Only – Get the toolkit or the book for a clear copy)

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The Change Planning Canvas™ is one of the more than fifty tools that make up my new Change Planning Toolkit™ that is now available via individual licenses for educational use and site licenses for professional and commercial use. It helps you move away from the incredibly counter-productive practice of planning change in isolation.

Organizations that do a better job of explaining their changes and the purposes for them, not coincidentally also tend to build up a higher level of trust over time, and organizations that do a better job at change explanation and maintain higher levels of trust are able to change faster!

But some people may still resist, why?

Some people may resist your change effort for a number of different reasons, but you need to identify up-front not only why people resist but also who will likely resist. Change Planning Toolkit™ users will want to capture the group’s thoughts on who will resist in the middle box of the People Worksheet from the toolkit and the corresponding box on the Change Planning Canvas™.

Some of the typical reasons why people will resist include:

  • inability to see the need for change or relevance;

  • loss of certainty (includes fear of job loss);

  • loss of purpose, direction, or status;

  • loss of mastery (includes loss of expertise/recognition);

  • loss of control or ownership;

  • loss of connection or attachment;

  • lack of trust or clarity;

  • fear of failure (feel unprepared);

  • see proposed change as irrelevant or a bad idea;

  • feel overwhelmed by thought of change.

You’ll want to identify the individuals or groups who have one of the above reasons for resisting change, and you will want to plan from the start to overcome that resistance in the same way that any good salesperson plans for objections, learns to hear them, and practices how to overcome them (for example, by developing and sharing strategies with coworkers).
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Overcoming Resistance Worksheet

(For Illustration Purposes Only – Get the toolkit for a clear copy)

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In the Change Planning Toolkit™ I’ve provided space in the Overcoming Resistance Worksheet for your team to brainstorm both the groups and individuals likely to feel any of these reasons for resistance, together with space to capture some ideas for overcoming these objections (aka resistance).

The Change Planning Toolkit™ also provides the Five Change Reactions Worksheet which allows you to identify which groups and individuals tend towards each of the five change reactions highlighted in this worksheet and explained in my book Charting Change.. These five change reactions typically occur in a standard distribution (aka bell curve) and you can increase the chances of your change success by shifting enough people to the left along the curve.

So, there you have it, a quick look at The Big Change Management Lie about the inevitability of change resistance and some ways that it can be avoided or at least mitigated, and an introduction to how some of the tools from the Change Planning Toolkit™ can provide even more help.

Accelerate your change and transformation success

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