STEP EIGHT

Overcome Challenges

Change will only happen when the pain of change is less than the pain of staying the same.

—Richard Beckhard

Key points to keep in mind During a change initiative, challenges come in a number of ways and from a number of sources. Some result from events you expect or know may happen. For example, people quit their jobs, leaving you to come up with substitute resources, or competitors come up with new products that threaten your market share. Other challenges arise more unexpectedly. For example, the whole team leaves the organization at a critical point in the project, leaving you with no way to complete your mission or forcing you to allow a competitor to take over your company. Being able to deal with challenges has become a routine part of every function in an organization. Understanding how to address issues and knowing how to utilize resources makes a difference in the overall success of the individual and the organization. This section covers a variety of challenges that you may encounter and gives you some tips for overcoming them.

Why Do People Resist Change?

Don’t expect everyone to stand in line waiting to join you as you embark on a change project. Individuals become comfortable in their routine. While some employees may not like their current situation (and even complain about it every day), they know what to expect, which is less scary than the unknown that change brings. Individuals may resist change even when they know the future brings opportunity. In fact, some people are so reluctant to change that they may resist even if they know that the consequences of not changing would be dire. They just ignore, deny, or hope that things will work out. The sad fact is they rarely do.

Individuals give many reasons for resisting change (Schuler, 2003). The challenge in the change process is to understand and overcome individuals’ reasons for resistance. Some are simple and based on misinformation; others are deeply rooted in values and tradition. The degree of risk people see in a change is based on their perception, not necessarily on actual reality. Sharing information and having an open channel of communication between those initiating and those being affected by the change can make a difference in the level of success in both the individual and the organization.

Schuler gives the top 10 reasons individuals resist change:

1. The risk of change is seen as greater than the risk of standing still.
2. People feel connected to other people who are identified with the old way.
3. People have no role models for the new way.
4. People fear they lack the competence to change.
5. People feel overloaded and overwhelmed.
6. People want to be sure the new ideas are sound. 
7. People fear hidden agendas among those driving change.
8. People feel the proposed change threatens their personal level of confidence.
9. People fear a loss of status or quality of life.
10. People genuinely believe that the proposed change is a bad idea.

The root of resistance is often a lack of understanding what change is needed and why. Educating individuals can jump-start their understanding of the need for change. Showing them the anticipated positive impacts of change and the probable consequences of not changing can further drive the point home. Relating the organization’s position to that of its competitors also serves to emphasize an organization’s reason for change (Pritchett, 2009).

For example, although it was once a major Fortune 500 company, computer maker Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) no longer exists because its founder and CEO resisted the idea of the personal computer. He was well known for saying that “there is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.” Just think of the market he missed with this type of thinking! The ability to anticipate and take advantage of change is key to an organization’s continued viability.

Often an organization’s bureaucratic structure can cause problems. Bureaucracies generally provide structure and routine and give people methods and processes for completing tasks. The problem is they become entrenched and can get in the way of change. People who are afraid of change often go back to the rules imposed by bureaucracies to defend their actions and their resulting resistance. Expose resistance when you can. Bringing the issues into the open for people to address shows no one is trying to hide anything. Whether the issues are real or not, the commitment to address them shows everyone you have nothing to hide. This demonstrates commitment from leadership and openness to ideas and input from all members and levels of the organization.

Helping people “get it” is an important step. Resistance to change increases when people don’t understand why change is happening. Ambiguity leads to uncertainty, and as a result, people slow down and tend to do nothing. Change needs a purpose to get people to commit. Goals help clarify people’s responsibilities and give them something to set their sights on. Letting them know the anticipated challenges and problems sets the tone and prepares individuals for potential hang-ups. People need to know what change means specifically to them. The potential rewards that accompany success and the consequences of failure provide a context for acceptance of change.

We all have stories of how individuals have dealt with change. Many are filled with details of the rise and results of resistance. Signs of resistance include:

• ignoring direction
• not using identified processes and procedures
• not being willing to learn a new system
• challenging change (both overtly and covertly)
• openly criticizing the new processes and procedures
• finding excuses for not fulfilling responsibilities
• sabotaging initiatives.

Also keep in mind that resistance from employees is a form of feedback from people with knowledge and experience about an organization’s daily operations. Treat their concerns as valuable information, and you can gain ideas on potential challenges and opportunities as well as develop insights on how to communicate the change initiative to them (Ford & Ford, 2009).

Reasons for Resistance

Lack of Trust

A major factor in getting individuals to go along with change is the level of trust they have in those initiating it. If they have experienced unsuccessful or dissatisfying changes in the past—for example, leaders failed to provide expected support, or made promises that never came true—there may be reluctance. The credibility of the people driving the change is a key factor—if individuals see change managers as trustworthy, they are more likely to receive a message about change with enthusiasm.

Though not an easy measure, the trust factor is a major component in overcoming past challenges in pursuit of change. Relationships based on respect and trust can overcome hang-ups based on disagreement on process and procedure. Individuals want to know that they will not be taken advantage of or made to look bad. When people trust each other, they are more willing to share, take on greater risks together, and strive to achieve more overall.

Some specific actions that change leaders can take to build trust include the following:

• Build a common frame of reference. This involves communicating with others so they know why the change initiative is taking place and what it will bring.
• Provide a person and place to go to when issues come up. Often when individuals are undergoing a change process, they cannot rely on their traditional support system to provide them with answers. Providing a “change champion” or change office they can go to for answers to their questions helps build a common bond. They need to feel they can approach this person or group without fear that they will be looked down upon or retaliated against. A blog or similar tool can allow individuals to ask questions so the change team can respond and share information. 
• Create a common experience. Training is often part of the change process, and smart change leaders realize it actually serves two purposes. One is to teach individuals to do things in a new and different way. The second and often overlooked purpose is to “socialize” individuals to the coming change. Those who participate in training not only receive a set of skills, but a collective insight and frame of reference for going forward.

Peer Pressure

Individuals may wait for their colleagues and co-workers to respond before deciding how to act themselves. In some cases, they would never listen to the ideas of a specific individual or group, but when it comes to the unknowns of change, they look for consistency in others’ response. 

To combat this type of resistance, change leaders need to communicate that, though relationships may work differently after implementation of the change, individuals are being given an opportunity to affect their own future by participating in the change initiative. Leaders need people to participate in making change happen, not just wait for it to happen to them.

Finding and working with those who are looked up to by others can help get resistant individuals on board. If those in whom they already have the trust the change team is trying to build choose to support the change initiative, the resistant tend to follow along.

Opposition to Outside Influences

This type of resistance occurs specifically in organizations where an outside consultant or firm has suggested or designed the change initiative. It happens because organizations are reluctant to try ideas or new approaches not developed in-house, particularly when they have been successful on their own. When ideas or examples come in from other firms, they are often rejected before even being considered. Organizations need to ensure their culture does not block out ideas from outside sources or those not considered part of the mainstream organization.

When working with outside organizations, it helps to introduce them to everyone involved in the change initiative, including those who will be affected by the change. Sharing their background and what they see as their role, how they can help, and what they have done for others can help build credibility and open up others to work with them.

Self-Doubt

Challenges may come from how individuals feel about themselves and their ability to change. Often self-doubt and a fear of failure drive an individual’s reluctance to change more than the organization’s change initiatives. People may question whether their skills will work in the changed organization.

Helping individuals understand their role in the changed environment and showing them how they will be able to function whether through training, implementation of new processes, or changes in organization structure can go a long way toward laying the groundwork for individuals overcoming their self-doubt.

Initiating training and getting individuals involved in new processes, along with giving them the opportunity to work with new equipment early on in the change initiative, can help individuals feel more comfortable with it. Have mentors or skilled individuals on hand to provide advice or guidance to those who want it. These mentors can share hints and tips related to what is stated will work and “what really works” behind the change process.

Some individuals may be more open to getting involved than others. These change team members may take on the role of active change agents, and as a result, others may look to them for help in changing. When individuals are willing to serve as change agents, provide them with the tools and training necessary for success. Highlight their efforts and reward their successes. Give them visibility. It will encourage them to continue and show others that the changes can succeed. Pilot programs to get more individuals involved in a less risky environment also help reduce individuals’ lack of confidence in their ability to change.

Overload

Day-to-day operations often need to continue during the change process. Requiring individuals to work on both the current operations and the change initiative can lead to frustration and burnout. Not just a problem for individuals at the rank-and-file level, the risk for overload is often more critical for managers who are responsible for both maintaining current operations and implementing the change initiative.

Overload can also affect individuals trying to learn and perform at the same time. Often with change comes unsuccessful and unplanned events. Sometimes alternatives are readily available, and other times no contingencies have been planned for. Frustration results, and individuals’ behavior often turns to denial and blame.

Ways to address overload include looking at the change project schedule. Is the work being shared equally? At some point, one individual may have more assigned tasks than others. Check if those who are not as busy can cover even simple tasks (getting supplies, drafting documentation, responding to simple inquiries) to free up those who are heavily involved and under pressure to meet deadlines. Small tasks may seem small, but all tasks take time.

Related to overload is fatigue, another factor complicating change initiatives. Individuals often want to do a good job, but if processes are not well defined, they do everything by trial and error, which takes a great deal of time and mental effort.

By definition, a change initiative is a project with a designated start and end date, and intermittent milestones and deadlines. When a project starts to fall behind schedule, project managers often request more resources. The challenge, in the case of supplementary people resources, is the additional time needed to train them, another cause for overload.

Filters and Biases

One of the more openly addressed but least understood issues is that of bias. Biases come from a number of experiences and values developed over the years. The best way to deal with them is to realize they exist and deal with them directly.

As the change manager, you may come across the following types of bias in individuals who are resistant to change:

• Historical Bias—Judging things and individuals because of lessons learned in the past. Sometimes this type of bias is the hardest to overcome, especially if a change effort conflicts with an individual’s upbringing and value system. 
• Leniency Bias—Tending to be more lenient toward or accepting of a certain change over another. 
• Severity Bias—Tending to judge or resist a certain change more harshly than another. 
• Central Tendency Bias—Treating all change efforts the same. This can be a problem if an actual change does need to be addressed in a certain way for a certain reason. 
• Primacy and Recency Bias—Judging individuals involved in the change initiative by their first or latest impression.

The information people receive goes through filters, whether they are based on individuals’ learning and past experiences or messages received from others. Television news programs provide a clear illustration. Fox and CNN, for example, may tell the same story, but the persepctives, reasons, and even some facts behind the story may vary greatly between the two networks.

It is important for change managers to ensure that not only change team members but all individuals potentially affected by the change know and are able to confirm the facts about the change initiative and then make decisions accordingly. Too often individuals choose to resist change based on limited information.

Hoarding Information

Those organizations whose culture focuses on sharing of information usually experience less resistance to change initiatives. Other organizations in which all members look out only for themselves and have no incentive to help each other are very slow-moving toward change. 

To build cohesion among members of the organization—and thus combat the type of resistance that occurs when individuals hoard information that would, if shared, benefit everyone in the organization—change managers should encourage competition between individuals in what I call a “take it to the next level approach” whereby individuals get ahead by developing skills and achieving greater accomplishments as a team. Present the change initiative as an opportunity for them to develop and get better, not to hold others back. Offer incentives for making progress as a group. The challenge is to avoid encouraging individual competition at the expense of overall group cooperation in the pursuit of accomplishing change.

A culture of sharing creates a better environment for successful change initiatives because it brings individuals together and helps relationships form and build. A great example of this is the Linux operating system for computers. When Linus Torvalds started writing the code to build this operating system, rather than keep it to himself he put it on the Internet and allowed others to contribute and improve it. With no financial reward involved, this process gave the individuals who participated in the change a sense of belonging and accomplishment. It drove others to add what they could to make things better.

Stereotypes, Groupthink, and Other Things that Get in the Way

The number of potential challenges in a change effort is limitless. The following influences may give some insights to how individuals in various roles look at others in the change process. Some may sound a little extreme in terms of organizational change, but recognizing and being able to address related situations can make the difference between success and failure.

• Stereotypes—Preconceived, oversimplified, exaggerated, and often demeaning assumptions of the characteristics possessed by an individual due to his or her relationship to a specific group. Prejudice involves prejudging a person’s qualities and value based on arbitrary characteristics such as race. Problems occur in organizations when the work assigned or even an opportunity presented is based on assumptions rather than abilities. Change managers can overcome stereotypes by getting to know individuals instead of automatically categorizing them with a certain group.
• Ethnocentrism—The tendency to evaluate other ethnic groups according to the values and standards of one’s own ethnic group, especially with the conviction that one’s own ethnic group is superior to the other groups. Individuals who take an ethnocentric approach to others miss the opportunity to take advantage of diversity in accomplishing a goal.
• Xenophobia—The fear or hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything strange or foreign. While especially extreme in regard to organizational change, I have seen xenophobia in cases of mergers and acquisitions, where an almost xenophobic atmosphere surrounded any newcomers. Building exercises, along with opportunities for groups from the various organizations to get together and learn about each other as people, can help in this situation.
• Megalomania—An excessive preoccupation with one’s own importance; the feeling that one is better than others and all things should focus on the individual and his or her goals at the expense of others. Everyone has likely worked with a megalomaniac at some point. The challenge is to get such individuals to realize that by helping others they are in fact helping themselves.
• Groupthink—A situation in which individuals give in to the pressure of others in spite of knowing an issue or problem exists. One of the most in-depth studies of groupthink is related to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. An engineer knew issues existed with what is known as O-rings at certain temperatures and that those issues could lead to disastrous results to the shuttle, but gave in to pressure from others on the team, who were more concerned with their reputations and maintaining their set time line.
• False beliefs—Beliefs based on folklore, tradition, or simple misunderstandings that have no substance behind them. Individuals’ beliefs and values affect how they respond to a change scenario. Some values are deep-rooted and difficult to change.
• Habit—The status quo. Sometimes individuals do things a certain way just because they always have. The issue comes in when these habits are challenged and by whom.

Often told in illustration of the last point is the humorous story of the pot roast and why the ends are cut off. A couple is preparing a pot roast for a holiday meal. Prior to putting it in the cooking pan, the wife cuts off the ends of the pot roast. Seeing this, the husband asks her why she cut off the ends. She replies she isn’t sure, but her mother always did it that way. So the husband asks his mother-in-law why she cut the ends off the pot roast, and she says her mother had always done it so she did it too. So he asks his wife’s grandmother why she cut the ends off the pot roast, and she explains that her cooking pan was too small to fit the entire roast.

Just think how much pot roast—or time to make progress toward positive change—has been wasted over the years because of a lack of understanding.

Addressing Resistance to Change

Always remember to utilize your change vision to help people understand the reason behind and goal for the change. A little planning for potential challenges and an established mechanism for two-way communication can stave off resistance before it starts.

General strategies for addressing resistance to change, along with potential advantages and disadvantages of each approach, are presented in Table 8.1. Also, there are two particular responsibilities of change managers in addressing resistance—handling disagreements and building coalitions.

Handling Disagreement

Disagreements will come up in any change project. They key is to use the differing opinions to generate new and potentially better ideas to deal with a situation. Mary Lou Higgerson (1996) has come up with a helpful set of ground rules for working through the process of disagreement:

TABLE 8.1

Strategies for Dealing With Resistance

• Take charge and show that things like abusive language will not be tolerated.
• Derogatory comments that represent personal attacks will not be tolerated.
• Differences of opinion will be discussed, and everyone will be heard.
• Individuals will be able to express their views without interruption or fear of retaliation.
• Unsubstantiated assertions will not influence the vote or outcome.
• Issues, not personalities, will be subject to debate.
• Tears or emotional outbursts will not derail discussion of substantive issues.
• Department issues will be discussed and decided at department meetings, not at any subgroup level.

Bill George makes the good point that “crises offer rare opportunities to make major changes in an organization because they lessen the resistance that exists in good times” (Lagace, 2009).

Building Coalitions

Building coalitions can often help in overcoming challenges to change. Coalitions bring groups together to support a common purpose. They are generally formed temporarily and among groups that would not normally be business partners but in this case are trying to achieve a specific common goal. Their success is driven by the personal relationships built between representatives of these groups. Building a reputation as a coalition builder can also help individuals make progress career-wise.

Essential to creating a coalition is ensuring that the values of your organization are visible, not just in words, but in the actions of members and participants sponsoring and leading the change initiative. A set of core values gives individuals in an organization a guideline for how to behave and on which to base their decisions.

Forming a coalition takes individuals with insight and the ability to bring groups together in pursuit of a common interest. A potential pitfall in being part of a coalition is that portions of one coalition partner’s goal set or principles may be opposed by another partner, or certain provisions may not go over well with other organizations with which yours has a positive relationship. Change leaders realize that what one group wants may not be exactly what another group wants, but both groups’ goals may be similar enough that working with each other can help them both make a positive change. Coalition builders look for an overlap of interests and the potential impact on two groups in a partnership.

An example of a coalition coming together involves the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Companies (OPEC), which keep oil prices artificially high because, as a group, they have the power to do so. The countries may disagree on a number of other issues, but when it comes to the price of oil, they all want to keep the price high.

In addition, a common language helps individuals in an organization to understand the meanings and implications of events. Just about every profession, industry, or organization uses a unique language to describe itself and how it accomplishes its goals. Accepting a language from the past can cause challenges while building one for today, keeping in mind the external environment, can bring individuals together and act as a means of bonding.

Note that coalitions of opposing sides can develop as well. A number of groups that don’t have much in common outside of one specific cause might come together and then drive another set of groups to come together, again to support a single view, but this time in opposition to the first coalition’s stance. In some cases, partners in one coalition can be opponents in another. For the purposes of addressing resistance to change, consider if any individuals, groups, or organizations can help your organization overcome potential barriers to change, and how to best work with them. In working with coalition members:

• Look for common areas of interest.
• Consider the strength of the overlap in these areas of interest.
• Identify neutral areas, or areas that will not be affected by any position a coalition partner takes.
• Identify areas of disagreement and how critical they are to your position.
• Determine the consequences of not getting your way.
• Decide whether you can give up some of this in order to get support for your main goal.
• Look again for areas of common interest that you might build on to form a stronger coalition.

Key Points to Keep in Mind

It’s impossible to anticipate all the challenges that will spring up during your change initiative, but by understanding some of the tools, concepts, and processes outlined in this chapter, you can take steps to overcome group and individual resistance to change.

Asking yourself the following questions can help you avoid the major challenges a change initiative presents:

• Who are the various groups that may be affected by your change initiative? 
• What do the various groups have to gain and lose as a result of the change? 
• How much power do the groups involved have, and how might it affect the change effort? 
• What actions are groups or individuals taking? Are they resisting the overall change initiative or only certain aspects of it?
• What resources do you have should a group put up resistance to the change you are initiating?
• Have you planned for contingencies in case an issue comes up or things don’t go according to expectations?

WORKSHEET 8.1

Reflecting on the Past to Prepare for Future Change

WORKSHEET 8.2

Measuring Change resistance