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Culture Shift: Overcoming Resistance to Change
June 30, 2008
Wondering how best to announce a major change initiative? If so, that could be your first big mistake right there.
By Paul Levesque
• True or False: Some (perhaps many) employees in your organization are unhappy with the status quo.
• True or False: Some (perhaps many) of these same employees openly resist your every effort to change things.
If you anwered "true" to both statements, it can feel like an irresolvable paradox: the same people who say they wish things were different seem determined to fight every change that comes along. What's really at work here?
The paradox disappears when we distinguish between the kind of resistance driven by resentment or hostility, and the kind driven by fear. These two types of resistance may look very much alike, but are as different as a celebrity's life-like wax figure is different from the actual person.
Bypassing Fear of the Unknown
Do you recall seeing WWII-era newsreel footage in which Allied soldiers threw open the gates of the Nazi concentration camps, and the surviving prisoners were almost reluctant to emerge? This is fear-based resistance to change at its most extreme. Employees who feel they’ve been misled or unfairly treated—even if only by previous employers—reach a point where any disruption of any kind awakens all of their worst fears. It doesn't mean they've resigned themselves to the status quo. Rather, it means they've come to think of change in the workplace as the first warning sign that things are probably about to get even worse. All the reassurances from management that "this time it's going to be different" now carry about as much weight as promises made by campaigning politicians.
So what's the secret for turning this kind of resistance into support?
1. Don't announce the change ahead of time. In the many executive workshops I've led, the moment the team comes up with an exciting new strategic initiative, all their joy suddenly evaporates as they confront a monstrous stumbling block. "How are we going to announce this?" they groan, anticipating the impenetrable wall of employee resistance that awaits them.
My answer is, forget the big splashy PR campaign that lists all the wonderful benefits that are going to ensue. Workers have heard it all before. Just start realizing some of those benefits and let employees experience firsthand the positive effect the change is having. Let them start asking questions about it. That's the time to declare, "We're thinking of making this change permanent, and organization-wide. Think it'd be a good idea?" Get them convincing you that the change is worthwhile.
2. Transform it from your change to their change. The real cultural masterstroke here is to convey that nothing about the change is set in stone, and that employee involvement is vital to help make it work. Invite your team's creative ideas in group brainstorming sessions and—more importantly—implement as many of their ideas as possible. Give generous and highly-visible credit to the employees whose ideas are being applied, so that remaining resistors can see their peers are part of the growing excitement. Take that investment you were going to make on a splashy PR campaign at the front end and spend it instead on splashy employee recognition and celebration as the change unfolds. Make it impossible for hard-core cynics to cite this as another unwelcome change being forced down everybody's throats.
The above will usually be enough to dramatically reduce fear-based resistance. But what about the hostility-based resistance of those hard-core cynics? How do you turn them around? Answer: you don't even try.
Resistance Is Not the Real Problem
In any collective setting, there will always be a small percentage of dyed-in-the-wool resistors—those angry, resentful folks who will never buy into any management initiative, almost as a matter of personal principle. And it's a costly mistake for managers to invest 85% of their time and energy trying to turn around the 15% of malcontents who have dug in their heels and are prepared to resist to the very end.
These hard-core resistors are not as crucial for success as those who typically make up a larger category: the fence-sitters. These are the employees who don't feel very strongly about the issue—or about much else in their workplace, for that matter. They're the ones who will mutter whatever they think their boss wants to hear when asked if they'll support the change, but whose hearts have not yet truly been won over.
Resistance is not the big killer of organizational change initiatives—apathy is. Waste less time and effort trying to persuade the noisy resistors, and focus instead on drawing in the quietly indifferent. As more of these become supporters, the noisy resistors find themselves becoming an ever-shrinking minority. With time, cultural pressure from everyone around them will either nudge them on board…or out the door.
Either way, it's an important win for the business as a whole.
 Editor's Note: In this week's Culture Shift podcast, Paul Levesque once again uses his entertaining "Storybook Corner" format to illustrate two very different approaches for dealing with resistance to change. Listen to the audio or Watch the video of this little fable, and then test yourself to find out how much you really know about overcoming resistance in others.
Be sure to check out all of the podcasts from the Culture Shift series at www.incentivemag.com/cultureshift.
INCENTIVE online "Culture Shift" columnist Paul Levesque is the author of five books, including "Customer Service Made Easy" and "Motivation," both from Entrepreneur Press. He's a seminar leader and public speaker with two decades' experience as an international business consultant specializing in the connection between employee motivation and customer satisfaction.
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