Change Without Resistance

Change Without Resistance

Are you surprised at how quickly your people are adapting to working in new ways during different phases of lockdown and reopening? Webinar after webinar, I hear success stories about team productivity in a virtual world, of virtual events even more successful than their in-person counterparts, of safe ways of working adopted almost seamlessly. 

From a change management point of view, this doesn’t surprise me at all.

There is, of course, a very compelling case for change that combines both a burning platform (“we could die from this virus,” or “the very survival of our business is at stake”) and, in many cases, a burning ambition (“working differently together, we can stop the spread and save lives,” or “deliver our essential products to the people who need them”). There are also places where government mandates or corporate policies give you no choice but to change.

But I think it’s more than that. I think leaders simply don’t have time or energy to focus on managing resistance. When we focus on resistance, we dehumanize change and sink our transformation plans.

Traditional change management models have trained us to pay what is, in my opinion, an unhealthy amount of attention on the people who aren’t “with the program.” The thinking goes something like this:  

As a leader I’ve set out a compelling vision. I’ve described what needs to change and what’s in it for them. We have written out new procedures, provided new technology, and highlighted examples of new behaviors. I’ve even been an inspirational role model. If individuals have not embraced this change with energy, they are resistors who are blocking success for us all. So now let’s put our energy into turning them around. Fix them and we will succeed in our change program.

The problem with this approach is that it misses fundamental aspects of being human. At the most basic level, it assumes that a leader or an environment or information can make someone feel or act in a specific way. Leaders do not have that power, and we are misguided when we think we do. This concept of an outside stimulus controlling a person’s experience is inherently flawed. It is simply not how the human mind works. Big idea, I know. You need a book to unpack that one. It’s called Invisible Power.

Secondly, the narrative hijacks your attention to focus on the negative. Look for resistance and you will find resistance. Look for success and you will find success. My guess is that during these lockdowns, we as leaders had the instinct to be guided by hope. With the world so scary, we wanted to see goodness and possibility in our people. (@susan goldsworthy could tell us more about this.) We looked for success, we saw it, and our very focus reinforced it. We simply didn’t get to the phase where we have the time and attention to look for resistance. And let’s hope we don’t get pulled in that direction as we move into the new normal.

Last point in what could be a very long exploration well beyond this blog. The approach in italics labels people as the problem. People are not a problem to be fixed. In fact, they are our only solution! Instead of labeling them as resistors, we can connect with them as humans simply being humans. Humans tend to go through a pattern of thinking and feelings that have been captured in the Kubler-Ross change curve which emerged out of research into the grief process. The basic idea, explained really well in the book Care to Dare, is that all change involves a loss, and it is a very human process to “grieve” that loss. When we see people as resisting change, we essentially devalue their experience and their human need for grief. Or maybe we get that, but we assume that their internal process should be as fast or linear or as complete as our own. An alternative approach is empathetic curiosity:  how can we seek to understand what’s really going on for them? What’s their thinking? What fears or losses are they facing?  What movement have they made that we have not recognized?

I’ve heard often that one third of people jump on board the change wagon readily, one third need some help, and one third will resist until the cows come home. Not my favorite way to view change, but it reminds us that the majority of people are already in the “solution” column. Let’s focus our limited resources on them and see what happens. My guess is that they will bring their friends along and we as leaders will be surprised at what can happen when we resist the pull of resistance.