People Naturally Resist Change
Straight Truth
How can we lead a large group through disruptive changes?
Today’s environment has many disruptive changes. Layoffs lead to new organizations, loss of expertise, and canceled projects. Return to office changes working styles. AI will change workflows.
A reader asked:
“How to convince people to change the way of working and technology, letting go the known and status quo?”
The Straight Truth is that all of us, including me and you, resist change.
We may be good at embracing one form of change but another makes us uncomfortable and we avoid it.
As leaders, we must overcome this ourselves and help our teams.
There are many reasons people resist change, but they are rooted in that change takes more effort than staying the same. The unknown or new feels more risky. We know how to do what we have always done. What we are doing is working for us at some level. Whether it is safe (“can’t get in trouble for doing it the old way”) or comfortable, we keep doing it because it is known and safe.
As leaders, we often focus on making big decisions and setting direction. We think of that as the dramatic part of the job.
But a huge part of leadership is helping organizations and people actually change, and it is a very different skill.
Two keys:
Realize that each person moves at a different speed and this is OK. One person may leap into the change with excitement while another needs a long time and a lot of support to evolve.
You must keep consistent pressure on change until it becomes the new normal. Just as eating one salad will not pivot most people onto a healthy diet, having one meeting announcing a new process or direction will not change your team.
Leaders make the mistake of thinking that making the hard decision is the work. Rolling it out in a way that revisits, re-explains, and re-justifies the decision over the course of weeks or months is the real work.
To drive a big change you need a plan for consistent reinforcement and need “mechanisms” like a reorganization or a new tool that push the change forward even when you are not in the room.
3 books for this topic.
Note: These are affiliate links, so full disclosure, I'll get a few pennies of what you pay Amazon if you use them.
Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip and Dan Heat. The subtitle “How to Change Things When Change Is Hard” is what the person who asked this question wanted to know.
Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson, MD
I Moved Your Cheese: For Those Who Refuse to Live as Mice in Someone Else's Maze by Deepak Malhotra
If you are new to leadership, I co-wrote the 10 hard truths about tech leadership with a former Twitch colleague.
If you want a systematic way to Think Big and drive change, read this.
As always, I welcome reader comments to extend my points — share how you have led others through uncomfortable changes.
Audience Insights
I have consolidated additional ideas worth considering from my LinkedIn audience, including:
An executive coach uses a 3-step method to lead change in her clients:
Get them present to the current impact of how things are.
Enroll them in the vision of the change. And the impact it will have on their life.
Acknowledge their resistance and support them through the change by repeatedly bringing them to what they really want.
“Coalition of the willing” - data supports that you only need ~25% adoption to actually get the change in motion and gather others to the movement. Thus, early in the process, get supporters/champions to help you drive change.
Another critical leadership skill is cultivating an adaptive and resilient culture that embraces change. Consider Apple’s iconic “Think Different” slogan and how it celebrated the “crazy ones.”
Also realize that change affects people in different ways. When driving your message, think about why you want this change and why your team will want it too.
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Straight Truth is a series where I take people’s hard questions and answer them in as direct a manner as possible, cutting through the polite fiction of larger workplaces. Jobs and careers are not as “fair” as we hope. I cannot give you justice at work, I can give you the truth as I see it.
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