Tame The Tiger

“Resistance to change is normal.” People looooove saying this in business environments. It lets project managers off the hook. Takes the blame off sponsors and people leaders. Even removes burden from end users.

And it makes [good] change managers absolutely cringe. People are not resistant to change. Yes, I said it.

We manage change in our personal environments constantly. We barely blink and hardly resist. Our bank rolls out an app update. We get a new car. We jump in an RV, leave our entire support system in the dust, drive across the country and start a new life. Little changes.

People are, however, resistant to many things—new solutions end users weren’t involved in designing, losing their subject matter expertise (SME) status on the other side of go-live, changes that haven’t been given context, looking technologically inept in a multi-generational workforce and losing their jobs (and homes and marriages and kids’ college funds).

I remain a fan of the ADKAR methodology, despite what I see on LinkedIn. It seems everyone is certified these days, but practitioners either do not deeply understand it (and humans) or organizations are not empowering their OCM experts to actually follow it.

Change management is not sending an email (awareness and desire?) about a training (knowledge and ability?) and taking a survey (reinforcement?) that results in nothingness.

It is engaging end users in developing the systems their cohorts will use, ensuring SMEs will still be SMEs on the other side, creating a safe space where lack of understanding is okay, providing opportunities for learning across channels, enabling people leaders to lead their people, collecting feedback and communicating how it led to improvements.

Our brains are wired to make us resistant to threats, not change. Remove the threats and you create an environment where change isn’t the deadly tiger in the room and innovation can thrive.

The key to overcoming resistance to change is to frame your actions and continually adjust them as you move forward so that those who might be affected by any changes see them as useful and beneficial for them. This isn’t as hard as it sounds. You just have to be vigilant in paying attention to how you’re influencing the lives of people who matter.

— Stewart D. Friedman

Shannon Vasko is a natural-born planner with a passion for strategy and integrated communications. AI was not used for content creation.© MI Compass Services.