Overcoming resistance to change

By Tom Wagner

Human brains are hard wired to do three things: match patterns, resist or fight any threats to survival and respond first with emotion over logic, according to Dr. Anne Riches, a well-respected expert on people's resistance to change.

Many thousands of years of experience have helped shape our brains and instinctive behaviors, while "management" is a brand new endeavor by comparison. Ponder this for a while and you'll see some patterns that illustrate why most significant change efforts fail.

The emotional "How might this affect me?" response begins from a skeptical perspective. Reinforce this bias with memories of previous failed changes and you have three strikes against change. But leadership is not baseball, and three strikes should just serve to clarify the obstacles to change and remind the change agent how much time and effort is required to bring about lasting change.

The late business guru Peter F. Drucker segregated change efforts into two dimensions: transitional, with a short-term focus, and transformational, which is designed to ensure long-term success. Many organizations struggle with transitional change and its near-term focus, which typically involves adapting to new opportunities or dealing with current threats.

Successfully carrying out transformational change is much more difficult, and most of these strategic change efforts fail.

You can improve your making-change-happen success rate by being mindful of our built-in tendencies to resist change and designing a strategy to cope with them. I recommend the following four-step approach:

1. Create a sense of urgency

2. Build a coalition of trendsetters

3. Sell the vision

4. Use discipline and planning

Remember two important truths when planning and managing change efforts. The first is that people in organizations are resistant even to positive change because change disrupts our routines and expectations.

Therefore, discard any illusions that people will jump on the change bandwagon just because the change will make their lives better. The second truth is related to the first: The certainty of misery is more desirable than the misery of uncertainty. Emotion over logic. Make peace with that reality and then operate accordingly.

Fire! Create a sense of urgency to leverage the "fight or flight" threat response. Survivors of the 1988 Piper Alpha North Sea oil rig disaster (it caught fire and burned) leapt 15 stories, at night, into a burning sea.

One survivor was interviewed and asked what prompted him to jump. His answer was crudely colorful, but clear: It was jump or die. So remember The Law of the Burning Platform. The leader must frame the need for change as a make-or-break business imperative.

Trendsetters. People have an innate need to be a member of a group because that brings feelings of acceptance and security. Any thorough exploration of social trends clearly reveals the frequent triumph of emotion over logic and the change agent can exploit this tendency by building a coalition of influencers.

Begin with one or two trendsetters and then methodically enlarge this group until their attitudes and behaviors become the desirable standard. People want to be a part of the "in crowd" and will change their behaviors to fit in.

Vision. A clear and compelling vision for the future undergirds the entire change process. This vision should be relentlessly communicated, but managers always underestimate how much repetition is required. Leadership and change expert John Kotter suggests the leader should estimate how much communication is necessary and then multiply that effort by a factor of 10.

Also, employees should be allowed freedom to act on the vision. Moreover, people throughout the organization should have a chance to offer their reactions and suggestions during the change process. This participation helps create a sense of buy-in and employees are more enthusiastic and productive when they "own" an idea or initiative.

Discipline. Urgency and enthusiasm are necessary but not sufficient. Without disciplined planning and execution, the change effort will veer off course and eventually stall.