Change Management Learning Center
Sponsored by Prosci
2007 Best Practices in Change Management
Special tutorial series
More than 400 project leaders and change
management practitioners representing organizations from 59
countries share lessons learned and key success factors in
Prosci's 2007 Best Practices in Change Management
benchmarking report. This release marks Prosci's 10th anniversary
for change management research and 5th longitudinal study. The
70 page report is full of useful tips and findings that you can
put to use immediately. This
special tutorial seriesprovides glimpses into the
data and analysis from the 2007 report.
Resistance to change
Resistance to change is one of the most difficult and potentially
dangerous challenges a project team faces. Participants in the 2007 benchmarking study
provided invaluable data on how to identify and manage resistance. Below are
excerpts on resistance from the
2007 benchmarking report.
See Jim Simpson, Prosci instructor and former Fortune 500 executive,
discuss findings related to
resistance to change and what it means to change practitioners Time: 00:36 - Click to activate
Participants cited four top reasons for resistance to change by
employees, including:
Lack of awareness Employees resisted change because they lacked
awareness of why the change was being made and how it would impact
them. Participants indicated that employees resisted change when
they did not know the business reasons for the change or did not
understand the consequences of not changing. Employees also resisted
change when they did not know how the change would impact their job
role or when they did not have the answer to the question “What’s in it for
me?”
Participant quote: “They were not given the awareness of what the change was doing
to their day-to-day roles.”
Fear of the unknown
Lack of job security
Lack of sponsorship
Editor's reflection:
None of the top reasons for employee resistance are tied to
the specific solution or change that is being introduced,
but project teams tend to spend all of their time addressing
the specific details of the change. Managing resistance is
not about convincing employees that you have the right
solution, it is about answering "why" the change is
happening and addressing the natural fears associated with
leaving a comfortable, known current state and moving to an
ambiguous future state.
Primary reasons managers resist change
Participants highlighted five top reasons for resistance to change
from managers, including:
Fear of losing control and authority
Managers resisted a change when they feared a loss of control or
authority in the future state. This loss of control and authority
created an environment where managers felt threatened in their status,
position and autonomy. “Lines of business will lose complete control and
independence over financials.”
Lack of time
Comfort with the status quo
No answer to “What’s in it for me?”
No involvement in solution design
Editor's reflection:
As with the employees' list, only one of the top reasons
managers resist change is related to the specific solution.
And in that case, the reason was not being involved in
solution design - not resistance to the actual solution.
When managing resistance, time and energy must be dedicated
to answering the most common sources of resistance and not
"convincing of the correctness of the solution at all
costs."
Identifying resistance
Participants were asked to identify what resistance to change looked
like. The top responses were:
Lack of participation Lack of
participation was most commonly seen in employees trying to outlast the
change – waiting for it to “go away” like previously attempted changes.
Study participants also observed groups of employees trying to be
excused or exempted from adopting the new processes.
Participant quote: “Same old, same old
– this will go away like everything else has, just another ‘flavor of
the month’.”
Openly expressing emotion Negative emotional expression
took many forms including complaining, criticism, nitpicking, hostility,
aggression, anger, frustration, excuses, low morale, bad attitudes,
critical comments and openly expressing that the change would not work.
Lack of attendance and absenteeism Lack of attendance was seen in
three different ways: not attending status meetings and project events,
not attending scheduled trainings and being absent from work altogether.
Reverting to old ways Employees would ignore the new ways of doing
work and find work-arounds.
A decrease in productivity and missed
deadlines A noticeable reduction in work output or delays could be
observed.
Ineffective methods for dealing with resistance
Participants cited the top five mistakes to avoid when managing
resistance.
Ignoring resistance and expecting it to go away on its own
Participants overwhelming cited ignoring resistance as the biggest
mistake. Ignoring or avoiding resistance did not make it go away and
in some cases made it worse.
Not listening to and understanding the
concerns of those impacted Participants said that not understanding the root cause of
resistance prevented them from responding to the real issues and led
to the conclusion that all resistance is the same. This led to an
ineffective “one-size-fits-all approach” to managing resistance.
Next time, participants said they would not assume all behavior was
a result of resistance, but instead would work toward listening to
impacted employees and asking questions to understand the root
causes and reasons for their behavior.
Participant quote: “Not fully understanding the nature of the
resistance and the factors leading to it, and trying to apply a ‘one
approach fits all’ mindset.”
Not gaining input from those impacted Participants stated that applying force and pressure from the
top down to implement a change was a mistake for managing
resistance. This approach did not build the buy-in and engagement of
those impacted and therefore made it difficult to manage resistance.
Underestimating the resistance Underestimating the resistance to change was cited as a
significant mistake by participants because it resulted in a lack of
planning for the change. This lack of planning was felt most
significantly in the areas of building executive sponsorship and
securing their involvement.
Poor communication Poor communication made managing resistance very difficult. Poor
communication included inconsistent messages, incorrect messages,
incorrect senders, bad timing and dishonest information.
Participants also stated that using a public forum to confront a
resistor was a mistake.
Summary:
Resistance to change can slow implementation, degrade benefits and in
some cases cripple the entire project. In fact, resistance to change was
cited as the number two obstacle in the 2007 study.
Prosci's research and methodology suggest that there are steps that
can be taken to proactively manage resistance, before it significantly
impacts a project. Additionally, there are specific actions that can be
taken to address resistance when it does surface. In addition to the
complete data on the topics addressed above, the 2007 benchmarking study
includes sections on:
Who was most resistant to change?
Tactics to manage resistance
Impacts of using pain or fear to manage change
Organization’s readiness to change
The full report includes complete
descriptions of the top reasons for resistance presented in this
tutorial.
