Why People Resist Change

Resistance to change is the act of opposing or struggling with modifications or transformations that alter the status quo in the workplace.

 Reading an article I was reminded what a great impact resistance to change can have on the success of a change programme.

82% of contributors indicated that the main reason for change failing was resistance to the change .

In 2011 Bauer And Erdogan classified resistors based on individuals reaction to change.

Attitudes to Change

Active resistance is the most negative reaction to a proposed change attempt.  Those who engage in active resistance may sabotage the change effort and be outspoken objectors to the new procedures.  In contrast, passive resistance involves being disturbed by changes without necessarily voicing these opinions.  Instead, passive resisters may dislike the change quietly, feel stressed and unhappy, and even look for a new job without necessarily bringing their concerns to the attention of decision makers.  Compliance, however, involves going along with proposed changes with little enthusiasm.  Finally, those who show enthusiastic support are defenders of the new way and actually encourage others around them to give support to the change effort as well.

The reasons why individuals show passive or active resistance to change are:

• Disrupted Habits Individuals often resist change for the simple reason that change disrupts our habits.  Habits make life easy.  For this simple reason, people are sometimes surprisingly outspoken when confronted with simple changes at work.
• Personality Some individuals are more resistant to change than others. Some may view change as an opportunity to shine others as a threat that is overwhelming. For individuals who are risk-avoidant, the possibility of a change be more threatening.
• Feelings of Uncertainty Change inevitably bring feelings of uncertainty. The feeling that the future is unclear is enough to create stress for people because it leads to a sense of lost control.
• Fear of Failure Individuals also resist change when they feel that their performance may be affected.  Those who feel that they can perform well as a result of the changes are more likely to be committed, while those who have lower confidence in their ability to perform after changes are less committed.
• Personal Impact of Change Individuals tend to be more welcoming of change that is favorable to them on a personal level such as improving their quality of life or work life balance, or removing conflict.
• Prevalence of Change Any change effort should be considered within the context of all the other changes that are introduced in a company. If other recent changes have failed there will be an increased resistance to further change.
• Perceived Loss of Power One other reason individuals may resist change is that change may affect their power and influence in the organization. Any loss in prestige and status, even if only perceived will result in resistance to the change.

Do we do enough when managing change to support those showing resistance to overcome their concerns and increase the number of enthusiastic supporters?

Taking the fact that 82% of change fails as a result of resistance to change as an indicator; there is a need to do considerably more than we currently do.

Ensure you have the capacity to spend time with individuals.  Take the time to understand:

1. What the specific changes will include
2. Who the changes will impact
3. How these changes will impact on an individual basis
4. Why each individual might resist the changes

You will then have a degree of empathy to support each individual with his or her specific concerns and follow this understanding up by:

•  Having open and honest conversations
• Giving a strong and powerful rationale for change
• Creating opportunities for collaborative working
• Involving those that do the work in shaping solutions to problems
• Agreeing how to continue to support the individual and commit to follow-up
• Keeping anything shared in confidence to yourself

To discuss ideas for how to get people more engaged with changes before, during and after implementation contact us

Lucy Brownsdon, Director, Centre for Facilitation

What is a Facilitator?

The role of a Facilitator can be mysterious for those that have yet to experience a meeting or workshop run by a professional Facilitator.  For those that have, the purpose and the benefits of a Facilitator become clear.

The dictionary definition can be a little vague too:

Facilitate verb: make (an action or process) easy or easier.

The French word “facile” means easy

Comparing the lesser-known role of the facilitator to other more well-known roles the one common area is that all these roles will be involved in supporting change to happen.

• Trainers usually provide the information.
• Coaches will help shape the goal and the journey
• Consultants will usually give advice based on best practice in the sector.

The change may be very small, or transformational.  The changes typically are skills, behaviours, performance, ways of working, products, processes and strategies…..and all these roles support that process of change, they help the change to take place

So ….‘what is a Facilitator?’  Facilitators will typically design and run workshops, meetings and conferences with the structure to engage the team to meet their objectives…….

The facilitator does not lecture the group on how to meet their objectives using a series of ‘death by powerpoint’ presentations.

A facilitator will use more engaging techniques than just asking the question to the group.We know that the typically in old style debates those that speak loudest are the only ones to get heard.

Using a facilitator means everyone gets a chance to take part, to listen, to talk and to build on ideas. The sum of the output will be more powerful than an idea generated by the senior team on their own because this time there is ownership.

At an event we recently ran for Basware  we asked the group to describe the process at the end. This word cloud captures their feelings about the event.

We know that participants leaving any group event with these thoughts have a far better chance of succeeding in implementing the outputs with energy, enthusiasm and vigour.

If results count for you is there then consider the value of having your meetings facilitated by one of our professional facilitators and see how much difference this makes to the engagement levels in your meetings.  Read about what our clients say

Lucybrownsdon@centreforfacilitation.co.uk

Are our meetings giving a return on investment?

Whilst delivering a training course recently, the perennial topic of effective meetings raised it head – again!

Several of the people on the course were quite stressed, working long hours, looking tired and generally not the happiest people on the planet! I then did a quick survey, asking the simple question, ‘On average, how many hours per week do you spend in meetings?’  The replies ranged from about 5 hours to one person spending 30+ hours per week in meetings. Each of these meetings seemed to be typically attended by about 6 people. I then asked:-

 ‘and if your company’s CEO walked into the meeting, would all participants be able to explain what the meeting was going to achieve and how they were contributing to that objective?’ 

There was some nervous shifting in chairs and mutters – I felt I touched a nerve, so not wishing to heap further pain on already stressed individuals I backed off and opened up a ‘back to basics’ session on effective meetings, this resulted in a number of delegates committing to revisit their own meeting schedules.

It seems that most of us know what we should do for a meeting (e.g. justify, plan, prepare, run, follow-up on). However it is easy to find a series of meetings that have become a routine – they have a ‘life of their own’ – and occur without much thought and even less challenge about the actual value.

In our working lives, do we start to behave like hamsters in a wheel, expending more and more energy running around the same track? If this touches a nerve for you, do yourself a favour and just do a very quick analysis of your recent time at work:-

• How many meetings did you run / attend?
• Was the meeting justified, was it the best way to achieve the objective?
• Was each meeting effective and efficient, were all attendees required and able to contribute?
• If a key stakeholder, like the company CEO, or a major shareholder in the company, walked into the room, would you be confident to explain why the meeting was happening?

If you are positive in all your answers, Gold Star, well done! – keep up the good work.

If not, maybe you have found one key to a more productive and less stressful working life.

Collaboration: The Key to Project Success?

In October 2012 the BBC broadcast a 2-part series by Evan Davis entitled ‘Built in Britain’ http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nd290.

In these programmes Evan explored the potential for major infrastructure projects to act as a catalyst for reinvigorating the UK economy. In part 2, the story focused on two major projects; the high speed rail link between St Pancras /Channel Tunnel and the 2012 Olympic Park. The projects and the potential economic impact were very interesting.

The programme explored the reasons for the success of these two projects and sought to explain the reasons for our ‘new found ability to deliver complex projects successfully’. In addition to funding and engineering excellence, key project people identified a significant reason for the success of these projects in comparison to previous experiences was the contractual relationships set-up; which really encouraged people to work together – a very practical demonstration of the power of collaboration.

This is music to the ears. For many years I have worked with projects, engineering, construction and business change projects. In my experience the most successful projects emerge when project teams really do work together and engage their stakeholders effectively.

Global Change

The Project Director inherited a global business change project that had experienced two previous false starts. The Director instigated monthly, off-site, facilitated workshops which meant from the beginning of the project all the stakeholders in the project got together to set expectations, reviewed progress and sorted out challenges that were being faced. By doing this they really pulled together.

New IT Systems

Many business change projects incorporating new IT and the solutions need to be rolled out across numerous business units in the country.  For one organisation they made a significant step towards collaboration by arranging a short sequence of facilitated project launch workshops .

During these different workshops the facilitators focused on providing processes that enabled participants to absolutely engage in the highly uncertain situations.

These workshops went much further than the traditional project kick-off meetings where PowerPoint slides are shown and contact details are exchanged. In these facilitated workshops differing viewpoints and perspectives at the start of the project were seen as enriching the process. Through a series of professionally facilitated steps, all participants were able to share, explore and ultimately shape their projects. This led to true collaboration.

Just as in the recent infrastructure projects described in the Evan Davis programme, these business change projects were all delivered very successfully.

Perhaps the evidence points to an emergent clue – the key that unlocks a stream of successful projects – true collaboration requires time together to build trust and engagement
Talk to us about how we can help you to set up early project team engagement sessions  info@centreforfacilitation.co.uk

 

What Makes Change Programmes Stick?

Currently I am working on four independent pieces of work which can be described as business change. These involve, to varying degrees, changed ways of working, new IT solutions, strategic initiatives to address the market. All have in common the desire to improve the organisation. In every case there is a senior sponsor holding some fairly clear thoughts on the need for the change but not so sure about the means to achieve. Ultimately what is achieved from all of these various programmes will be largely dependent upon the extent to which people grasp the change and make it happen.
I am quietly very confident that all of these programmes will be successful. Yet this seems at odds with the numerous surveys that would suggest that as many as 3 out of 4 change programmes fail to meet expectations. In a way it feels as though we have grown change programmes into monsters – and they scare us! This often leads to a response that mobilises various resources, books, courses, consultants, complex models which in turn either leads to confusion or paralysis or both. Does this have to be so? I think not!

At the heart of many, if not all, change programmes – are people. All sorts of people, people who have identified the need for change (sponsors), people who agree the need (advocates), people who feel threatened by the change, people who can bring potentially useful specialist expertise and other people, probably the majority, who either haven’t heard about the change programme at all, or if they have – just wonder what is going on.

If the situation described above is the reality, then it seems that fundamentally that to move forward and to build momentum it is simple…. people need to talk to each other. However, somehow this gets lost in the hustle and bustle of the day-to-day pressures. Combine this with the noise from the advice and teachings of the books, courses, consultants, complex models and the desire to be ‘seen to be doing something’ and surprise, surprise whatever results are, or are not delivered, there are always massive gaps versus expectations.

Compare this to my current role as a facilitator on the four different change programmes. In each case I am working closely with the sponsors to ensure that we create the appropriate environment for people to be able to talk to each other. Of course, it is not just to talk, it is to listen, to ask questions, to challenge, to propose, to explore and to listen again – so that everyone builds a shared understanding, not only of what the change is aiming to achieve, but also how they can shape, influence, contribute to –  and ultimately own the change. I know how important these discussions will be in making the change stick and I am looking forward to observing how powerful this seemingly simple process is in practice.

nigelchapman@centreforfacilitation.co.uk