December 2002

Overcoming Resistance
To
Change

Jeff
Davidson

With all the changes in your world, industry,
and market, there will simply be no more standing still. At one time or another,
all organizations share some common concerns and challenges to do with change,
such as rebuilding trust, instilling a sense of ownership, shifting strategic
focus, or adapting to new management. The various players in a change
situation—sponsors, change agents, advocates, well-wishers, targets, and
bystanders—and how they interact with one another as a change plays out, make
the difference between a winning initiative and something less
desirable.

On your path to becoming an effective change
manager, recognize that the natural human response to change is resistance.
People become attached to familiar ways of doing things, even ways they
initially regarded as cumbersome, costly, or ineffective.

Individuals resist change; teams and groups
resist change; whole organizations do it, too. Furthermore, entire societies,
continents, world religions, and even the broad sweep of humanity, reflexively
resist change. Remember, “change” as used throughout this article means
significant, challenging, and disruptive alteration.

In essence, life is a series of attempts to
resist change, sometimes to incorporate a change that can’t be opposed, and then
to resist any new changes.

Fear of the
Unknown
The resistance that
people show when they’re confronted by change of course derives partly from fear
of the unknown. My sister worked for years in a shelter for battered women. Time
after time, she would meet with victims, who would share their tales of misery,
being beaten and abused by an out-of-control spouse or mate. Such mates then
relented hours or days later, professing sorrow for their actions. The women
returned to their partners. Then, the cycle would continue, until one day the
battered woman came to the shelter.

My sister wondered why such women didn’t leave
these relationships. After endless rounds of battering, apologies, and then
battering again, surely these victims knew the situation was not going to
change. Yet, most had extreme difficulties in making what observers thought to
be an obviously needed change—leaving the relationship.

A minor percentage of battered spouses were
afraid that the abusive mate would track them down. For the rest, the fear of
the unknown was greater than the fear of the next beating or of the potential
repercussions of leaving the relationship.

The Hardship of Making a
Better Life
These victims
were afraid of starting over again in a new community, finding new homes,
seeking new work, and living on their own. As difficult as it was to endure the
batterings, they saw greater hardship outside the relationship. The same
situation occurs in companies, communities, even entire cultures.

John Kenneth Galbraith, the noted economist
from Harvard, wrote The Nature of Mass Poverty. While researching for his book,
he visited four continents to determine why some civilizations remain poor. He
found that poor societies accommodate their poverty. As hard as it is to live in
poor conditions, sadly people find it less difficult to accept this hardship
than the challenge of making a better living. Hence, they accommodate their
poverty, and it lingers from year to year, decade to decade, and even century to
century.

You likely don’t face anything like the
situations described, yet the demons keeping you or your team from embracing
change may be just as onerous. People resist change most of the time, even in
this era, when presumably they already are acclimated to it. When individuals
understand that a change will be for the better, they still will likely resist.
Why?

Embracing change takes time and effort the
participants may not want to invest.

Taking on something new largely means
giving up something else that is familiar, comfortable, and
predictable.

Annoyance or fear of disruption may stop
people from taking first steps, even when they know that the net result will
greatly benefit them.

If change is imposed externally, not
derived internally, resistance may be ego-related.

A Tale of Resistance

In 1981, I worked for a management
consultancy firm in Washington, D.C. that employed a staff of 40 people. At the
end of each consulting engagement, we wrote a report for the client, which was
the most cumbersome, labor-intensive aspect of the job.

I had written my share of reports and was
looking for ways to do my work faster and easier. One day, I saw that a staff
consultant used a pocket dictator to dictate letters. I asked him if I could
borrow it for awhile and he agreed. I became proficient at using the dictator in
about two minutes and surmised that nearly anyone could do the same. I got his
permission to borrow it for the day.

Our office had transcription equipment, but
hardly anyone knew it. I decided to dictate my next report. I loathed writing
longhand, and it took me forever. When I started using the dictation equipment,
miraculous things happened. Soon, I could do my job in 30 percent of the time it
used to take me. Incredibly, my 40-hour workweek now only required 12
hours.

Something seemed askew. Here was a device that
worked so well and so easily, and no one knew about it. I told my coworkers of
this miraculous equipment and sang the virtues of dictation equipment to my
boss. Surprisingly, nobody took my suggestions to give dictation a
try.

Everyone was attached to writing reports
longhand, then submitting them for word processing. So I fell silent. I decided
I would cease advocating dictation equipment. If others didn’t accept a new way
of doing things that could vastly improve their productivity and their lives, so
be it.

For the next three years, I used dictation
equipment extensively. I dictated every single thing that I needed to write and
save on computer. One of our office administrative staff transcribed the
mini-cassettes. With a weekly average of 28 hours freed, I used the time to
read, research, or help others in the office. I got large raises and promotions
several times, and by 1984, I was the third-ranking professional in the
company.

I could have ordered my staff to use dictation
equipment, but I refrained. Instead, I held sessions demonstrating how to use
the equipment. I let everyone get familiar with it and then let them decide
whether they would use it.

Around this time, PCs were starting to appear
in offices in large numbers. Some people started typing their reports, which was
a bit faster than writing but still woefully inefficient compared with
dictating. All eight members of my staff reverted to longhand writing or,
sometimes, to typing on a computer. No one had anything to do with dictation
equipment except perhaps to appease me. I let it go.

To this day, I am amazed at the diffidence
people show toward embracing change, even when given instruction, follow-up,
encouragement, time to make the transition, and every other chance to do things
a new way.

Management sage Peter Drucker has said that,
for new technology to be embraced, it has to have 10 times the advantages of
what people previously did. So it goes when you’re asking staff to incorporate
changes. Nearly all changes will likely cause some awkwardness, even if only for
a few moments. Some changes will have a lingering awkwardness. Some will make
your people feel self-conscious for days on end. But if they must undergo this
unease, it will help if you give them validation for their feelings, a most
helpful gesture in inducing them to move on.

An effective change manager anticipates
resistance at the outset of a change campaign. He or she almost welcomes
resistance because it’s a sign that the change process is unfolding. Consider
this situation: a change seen to be burdensome or demanding meets with little
resistance from those charged with executing it. If anything, such a situation
is cause for alarm because people would be masking their reactions.

Eat What They
Eat
When you understand
what your troops are enduring, potentially you can be a far better manager. In
the movie The Battle of the Bulge, the German commander, played by Robert Shaw,
was served a lavish meal one evening, when rations for his men had had to be cut
back. He waved away the server, in effect saying, “Bring me the same level of
rations that my men are receiving.”

This commander showed he understood the
importance of sharing the experience suffered by his targets of change. He could
easily have eaten the lavish meal and justified the feast. He could still have
empathized with what the troops were undergoing. He could imagine what it must
be like to eat only 40 percent of one’s normal calories. He could learn the
results of lower protein levels and could discuss the effects of calorie
deprivation.

None of these maneuvers, however, would give
him the insights that would naturally accrue from eating the same meal as they
had.

What about you? Are you ready to have the same
meal as your targets of change? Or will you rationalize the situation, claiming
you have the intellectual and emotional capacity to empathize with them? The old
adage “Do as I say, not as I do” can sound the death knell for a change
manager.

If you are managing people reporting to you
from different locations, chances are that each participant will feel as if he
is incurring the change alone! Managing change is challenging enough when a
group meets at the same location. It is magnified when targets of change report
in from a distance by e-mail, phone, and fax.

In such a scenario, your task is to be more
supportive and available than ever. You may be the only sounding board for
individuals in tumult. If they haven’t participated in a change campaign before,
at least knowingly, they are likely to feel as if their burden is unique:
“Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.” This is all the more reason to convene the
group periodically so its members can share their observations and
insights.

One Is the Loneliest
Number
When U.S. troops
began returning from World War II, they were assembled in large numbers,
consigned to ships, and over several months slowly shipped home. During their
time on board, they got to reflect with one another and mentally and emotionally
prepare themselves for reintegration into civilian society.

Conversely, U.S. troops returning from the
Vietnam War came home one at a time, injured or in a hurry. They came via jets
that transported them in less than 24 hours from a hellish environment back to
their old world. There was little or no transition time, scant chance for
camaraderie with people who had shared a like experience, no time to prepare
mentally and emotionally for reentry into the civilian world.

The WWII vets came home, got married, had
children, and bought houses. The Vietnam vets often couldn’t have relationships,
even within their own psyches, and incurred a high rate of drug abuse and
suicide.

Analyses of plane-crash survivors in remote
locations or people simply stuck for hours in elevators share that their plights
were lessened because of the companionship. Similarly, it takes a rare
individual to succeed alone in the face of disruptive change.

Following World War II, lone soldiers emerged
periodically who had been stranded on remote islands for 10 or 12 years,
believing that the battles still were going on. Now we know that such real-world
survivors are a unique breed. They are able to survive without perhaps the only
comforting aspect of an ordeal—the chance to commiserate with others.
Fortunately, your staff members have you to guide them through their darkest
hours.

Inducing
Commitment
If there were no
such thing as resistance, people could commit themselves to a change campaign in
a nanosecond. Whatever plans you had laid out, once understood, could be acted
upon swiftly. Change management consultant Daryl Conner sees commitment and
resistance as two sides of the same coin.

Initially, the time and energy investment you
will make to ensure commitment will be high. If you don’t work to build
commitment, at least at first, it may seem to you that you have gotten a free
ride. Resistance among your staff doesn’t seem to be significant! But wait a
moment! As the campaign proceeds, resistance mounts. Now, any efforts that you
make to shore up commitment need to be far greater than they would have been at
the outset, had you recognized the importance of early efforts.

Why don’t more change managers pay the price
of securing commitment early? For one thing, it’s a huge task, and
implementation can be exceedingly slow. It can feel as if you are not getting
anywhere. Also, some change managers are lulled into thinking that resistance
simply won’t be a major factor later on.

Daryl Conner says that securing commitment
among targets early on wins “bodies and souls,” whereas failing to do so may win
“bodies but not souls.”  The change manager who is willing to work to
develop strong commitment will position her team and indeed her campaign for
project success, rather than simply gaining compliance that might be
fleeting.

Conner points out that “many times, the way
people are approached—rather than the change itself—is what causes resistance.”
He’s observed that targets are likely to say that the change itself wasn’t so
bad, but the way it was foisted upon them ruffled a lot of feathers.

Slow Down

One paradox of starting a change campaign, in
light of the need to secure commitment and to ward off anticipated resistance,
is that often the first thing you need to do is slow down. Temporarily, slow
down, to manage a campaign that will unfold rapidly.

By slowing down, you get the chance to develop
synergistic working relationships, better communication, and more staff
involvement. While change managers naturally jump into a campaign seeking to
reach full speed in short order, the reality, proven through the ages, is that
the best change campaigns start at a measured, deliberate pace. Starting slowly,
a change can ultimately be incorporated at an accelerated pace.

Jeff Davidson, M.B.A., C.M.C. (http://www.breathingspace.com/), is a professional speaker,
Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and the author of Breathing Space: Living & Working at a Comfortable
Pace in a Sped-Up Society.

Copyright © 2002 by the
International City/County Management Association
(ICMA)