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Organizational Change: Why People Resist It

Pat Zigarmi, Judd Hoekstra, and Ken Blanchard

One of the reasons organizational leadership is more complicated than one-on-one or team leadership is that it often involves leading change. This can be chaotic and messy.

Today we live in “permanent whitewater.” What do we know about whitewater? It’s exhilarating and scary! You often have to go sideways or upside down to go forward. The flow is controlled by the environment, and there are unseen obstacles. Occasionally it’s wise to use an eddy to regroup and reflect, but eddies are often missed because whitewater seems to create its own momentum.

Sometimes in the midst of change, it’s hard for people to maintain perspective. This reminds us of the story about the little girl who comes home from school one day and asks her mother—although today it certainly could be her father—“Why does Daddy work so late every night?” The mother gives a sympathetic smile and replies, “Well, honey, Daddy just doesn’t have time to finish all his work during the day.” In her infinite wisdom the little girl says, “Then why don’t they put him in a slower group?” Alas, there are no slower groups. Constant change is a way of life.

Mark Twain once said, “The only person who likes change is a baby with a wet diaper.” Like it or not, in the dynamic society surrounding today’s organizations, the question of whether change will occur is no longer relevant. Change will occur. That is no longer a probability; it is a certainty.

The issue is, how do managers and leaders cope with the barrage of changes that confront them daily as they attempt to keep their organizations adaptive and viable?

The same performance drop occurs in organizations where large numbers of people are asked to make behavior changes at the same time. When one person on a team is learning a new skill, the rest of the team can often pick up the slack and keep the team on track. However, when everyone is learning new skills, who can pick up the slack?

When a change is introduced in an organization, an initial drop in organizational performance typically occurs before performance rises to a level above the prechange level. Effective change leaders, being aware of this and understanding the process of change, can minimize the drop in performance caused by large numbers of people learning new behaviors at the same time. They can also minimize the amount of time to achieve desired future performance. Furthermore, they can improve an organization’s capacity to initiate, implement, and sustain successful changes. That’s exactly what we hope you will be able to learn from this chapter and Chapter 15, “Leading People Through Change.”

• Is your organization on track to achieve its vision?

• Are your organization’s initiatives delivering the desired outcomes?

• Is your organization delivering those outcomes on time?

• Is your organization delivering those outcomes on budget?

• Is your organization maintaining high levels of productivity and morale?

• Are your people energized, committed, and passionate?

• Are your customers excited about your organization?

If you find it difficult to say yes to these questions, your focus on leading change should be more intense.

Most managers report that leading change is not their forte. In a survey of 350 senior executives across 14 industries, 68 percent confirmed that their companies had experienced unanticipated problems in the change process.¹ Furthermore, research indicates that 70 percent of organizational changes fail, and these failures can often be traced to ineffective leadership.

Fortunately, there is hope. If you recognize the reasons change typically gets derailed or fails, leadership can be proactive, thereby increasing the probability of success when initiating, implementing, and sustaining change. On the following page is a list of reasons why change fails.

When most people see this list, their reaction depends on whether they have usually been the target of change or the change agent. Targets of change frequently feel as though we have been studying their organization for years because they have seen these reasons why change fails in action, up close and personal. The reality is that while every organization is unique in some ways, organizations often struggle with change for the same reasons.

When change agents look at this list, they get discouraged because they realize how complicated implementing change can be and how many different things can go wrong. Where should they start? Which of the fifteen reasons why change fails should they concentrate on?

Over the years it has been our experience that if leaders can understand and overcome the first three reasons why change typically fails, they are on the road to being effective leaders of change.

In SLII^® terms, leaders who announce the change use a directing style. They tell everybody what they want to have happen, and then they disappear. Using an inappropriate delegating style, they expect the change to be automatically implemented. Unfortunately, that never happens. They are not managing the journey. As a result, the change gets derailed. Why?

Change gets derailed because people know they can outlast the announcement, or at least the person making the announcement. Because they haven’t been involved up to this point, they sense that the organization is concerned only with its own self-interests, not with the interests of everyone in the organization.

Change that is done to people creates more resistance. The moment vocal resistance occurs, the people leading the change break ranks. The minute they do, their lack of alignment signals that there’s no need for others to align to the change because it’s going nowhere.

A poor use of directing style, followed by an inappropriate delegating style—announcing the change and then abdicating responsibility for the change—means that the change will never be successfully implemented. To assure success, leaders should involve those impacted by the change in every phase of the change process.

1. Information concerns

2. Personal concerns

3. Implementation concerns

4. Impact concerns

5. Collaboration concerns

6. Refinement concerns

People going through a change often ask questions that give leaders clues about which stage of concern they are in. Most of the time, the people leading a change don’t hear these questions because there are no forums for people to express them. Or, if there are forums, the communication is one way. Those impacted by the change have little to no opportunity to question the reasons for the change or what the change will look like when it’s implemented. So instead of becoming advocates for the change because their concerns are surfaced and addressed, those impacted by the change become resistant to it.

Let’s look at each stage of concern and the questions people are asking themselves and their peers.

People with information concerns need the same information used by those who decided to move forward with the change. They don’t want to know if the change is good or bad until they understand it. Assuming that the rationale for change is based on solid information, share this information with people, and help them see what you see. Remember, in the absence of clear, factual communication, people tend to create their own information about the change, and rumors become facts.

In a SAP³ implementation where the change leadership team had done a good job explaining the business case, people said: “Fewer errors will occur with a single data entry. It will save money because we will eliminate double entries. Fewer steps will be needed, and more functionality and collaboration will occur across work groups. It will be ten times easier to access information. In the long run, it will save time because things will be done in the background. It will eliminate redundancy.”

Their information concerns were largely answered by the data the leadership team provided them through multiple vehicles.

People with personal concerns want to know how the change will play out for them. They wonder if they have the skills and resources to implement the change. As the organization changes, existing personal and organizational commitments are threatened. People are focused on what they are going to lose, not gain.

These personal concerns must be addressed in such a way that people feel they have been heard. As Werner Erhard often said, “What you resist, persists.” If you don’t permit people to deal with their feelings about what’s happening, these feelings stay around. The corollary to this principle is that if you permit people to deal with what is bothering them, in the very process of dealing with their feelings, the concerns often go away. Have you ever said to yourself, “I’m glad I got that off my chest”? If so, you know the relief that comes from sharing your feelings with someone. Just having a chance to talk about your concerns during change clears your mind and stimulates creativity that can be used to help rather than hinder change efforts. This is where listening comes in. Executives and managers must permit people to express their personal concerns openly, without fear of evaluation, judgment, or retribution.

In some cases, personal concerns are not resolved to an individual’s satisfaction, but the act of listening to these concerns typically goes a long way toward reducing resistance to the change effort.

If you don’t take time to address individual needs and fears, you won’t get people beyond this basic level of concern. For that reason, let’s look at some of the key personal concerns people often have about change.

People are at different levels of readiness for change. Although almost everyone experiences some resistance to change, some individuals may quickly get excited by an opportunity to implement new ideas; others need some time to warm up to new challenges. This doesn’t mean there’s any one “right” place to be on the readiness continuum; it just means that people have different outlooks and degrees of flexibility about what they’ve been asked to do. Awareness that people are at different levels of readiness for change can be extremely helpful in effectively implementing any change effort. It helps you identify “early adopters” or change advocates who can be part of your change leadership team. This awareness will help you reach out to those who appear to be resisting the change. Their reasons for resisting may represent caution, or they could be clues to problems that must be resolved if the change is to be successfully implemented.

People initially focus on what they have to give up. People’s first reaction to a suggested change often tends to be a personal sense of loss. What do we mean by “a loss”? A loss includes, among other things, the loss of control, time, order, resources, coworkers, competency, and prestige. To keep people moving forward, leaders need to help them deal with this sense of loss. It may seem silly, but people need to be given a chance to mourn their feelings of loss, perhaps just by having time to talk with others about how they feel. Remember, what you resist persists. Helping people get in touch with what they think they will be losing from the change will help them accept some of the benefits.

Ken Blanchard and John Jones, cofounder of University Associates, worked with several divisions of AT&T during the breakup of the corporation into seven separate companies.⁴ When they announced it, the leaders of this change started out by talking about the benefits. Ken and John realized that nobody could hear these benefits at the time because people’s personal concerns had not been dealt with. To resolve this, they set up “mourning sessions” throughout these divisions where people could talk openly about what they thought they would have to give up with this change. The following were the biggest issues that surfaced:

Loss of status. When you asked people at that time who they worked for, their chests would puff out as they said, “AT&T.” It just had a much better ring to it than “Jersey Bell” or “Bell South.”

Loss of lifetime employment. A classmate of Ken’s, after he graduated from Cornell, got a job with AT&T. When he called home to tell his mother, she cried with joy. “You’re set for life,” she said. In those days, if you got a job with AT&T, the expectation was that you would work for them for thirty or thirty-five years, have a wonderful retirement party, and then ride off into the sunset. In these days of constant change, people have personal concerns about long-term employment, knowing it’s a rarity.

Ken and John found that after people had expressed their feelings about these kinds of losses, they were much more willing and able to hear about the benefits of divestiture.

People feel alone even if everyone else is going through the same change. When change hits, even if everyone around us is facing the same situation, most of us tend to take it personally: “Why me?” The irony is that for the change to be successful, we need the support of others. In fact, we need to ask for such support. People are apt to feel punished when they have to learn new ways of working. If change is to be successful, people need to recruit the help of those around them. We need each other. This is why support groups work when people are facing changes or times of stress in their lives. They need to feel that their leaders, partners, co-workers, and families are on their side in supporting the changes they need to make. Remember, you can’t create a world-class organization by yourself. You need the support of others, and they need your support, too.

People are concerned that they will have insufficient resources. When people are asked to change, they often think they need additional time, money, facilities, and personnel. But the reality today is that we will have to do more with less. Organizations that have downsized have fewer people around, and those that are around are being asked to accept new responsibilities. They need to work smarter, not harder. Rather than providing these resources directly, leaders must help people discover their own ability to generate them.

People can handle only so much change. Beyond a few changes—or even only one, if the change is significant—people tend to get overwhelmed and become immobilized. That’s why it’s probably not best to change everything all at once. Choose the key areas that will make the biggest difference.

In the SAP implementation mentioned earlier, what personal concerns were expressed, and how were they addressed? In interviews, people said: “I saw the databases yesterday and realize I don’t have to do anything right now. It’s less intimidating now that I’ve been able to play with it a little. I’m worried about the timing—the ‘go live’ date is in the middle of everything else. It will take more time. I’m concerned that it will be hard to learn and use. I don’t think my team leader can speak for us. She doesn’t have a good enough view of our day-to-day work. I hope there will be one-on-one support because the training won’t create the sense of security I’ll need to be able to use the system confidently. If things run smoother, what will we do with our time? We have to answer the question ‘What does this mean for me?’ now. I can’t do this and my real job at the same time. When this project is over, I’ll have to go back and fix everything else.”

The SAP change leadership team in this company set up forums for people to express their personal concerns and then systematically worked at providing responses to questions about timing, involvement, support systems, and managing multiple priorities.

Once people feel that their personal concerns have been heard, they tend to turn their attention to how the change will really shake out. These are called implementation concerns.

People with implementation concerns are focused on the nitty-gritty—the details involved in implementing the change. They want to know if the change has been piloted. They know the change won’t go exactly as planned, so they want to know, “Where do we go for technical assistance and solutions to problems that arise as the change is being implemented?” People with implementation concerns want to know how to make the best use of information and resources. They also want to know how the organization’s infrastructure will support the change effort (the performance management system, recognition and rewards, career development).

In the SAP example mentioned earlier, implementation concerns such as these were voiced: “I’m concerned that people will hold onto their pet systems. Some other applications may survive, and we’ll end up with redundant systems. We don’t have the hardware to run the software. I’m concerned there won’t be enough time to clean up the data or verify the new business processes we’ve designed. I want to touch it now, sooner rather than later. We need more information about what we can expect and when we can give suggestions. I could really use a timeline—what I’ve seen has been too detailed or too sparse. I need to know when I’ll be involved/crunched. Will people really be held accountable for using the new system?”

These concerns were best addressed when the people closest to the challenges of implementing the change were involved in planning the solutions to the problems that were surfaced.

People with impact concerns are interested in the change’s relevance and payoff. Now that the change has gone “live,” the focus is on evaluation. This is the stage where people sell themselves on the benefits of the change based on the results being achieved. This is also the stage where leaders lose or build credibility for future change initiatives. If the change doesn’t positively impact results—or if people don’t know how to measure success—it will be more difficult to initiate and implement change in the future. Conversely, this is the stage where you can build change leaders for the future if you identify the early adopters and recognize their successes with the change.

People with collaboration concerns are focused on coordination and cooperation with others. They want to get everyone on board because they are convinced the change is making a positive difference. During this stage, get the early adopters to champion the change, and influence those who are still undecided.

People with refinement concerns are focused on continuous improvement. During an organizational change journey, a number of learnings usually occur. As a result, new opportunities for improvement often come to the surface at this stage.

When SAP got to the refinement stage, we heard the following: “We expect a drop in productivity when we go live. We have to begin to define who owns which work processes and who upstream/downstream needs to change when we go live. SAP isn’t just the implementation of new technology; it is business process redesign. We have to build the linkages and do the data conversions now. The experienced SAP users in the company haven’t been tapped. I’m concerned we’ll ship late when we make the conversion. Exceptions to usual flows are not being anticipated. Old-timers won’t be able to take the shortcuts they are used to. Real-time processing will help us eventually, but at first it will add time. It’s important to be thinking about integration across all processes now. I’m sure things will get worse in the first few weeks.”

We’ve learned that when people have refinement concerns with one change, they often are hatching the next change. The more you involve others in looking at options and in suggesting ways to do things differently, the easier it will be to build the business case for the next round of change.

For example, before a change is announced, the leaders of the change often have information that others in the organization don’t. In addition, these change leaders typically have figured out how the change will affect them personally and even have gone so far as to formulate an implementation plan before others in the organization are even aware of the proposed change. As a result, the change leaders have often addressed and resolved information, personal, and implementation concerns; now they are ready to address impact concerns by communicating the change’s benefits to the organization. The rest of the organization, however, still has not had a chance to voice their concerns. As a result, they will not be ready to hear about the change’s benefits until their information, personal, and implementation concerns have been addressed.

In contrast, when leaders involve people by surfacing, accurately diagnosing, and responding appropriately to the specific concerns people have in each stage of organizational change, the result is less resistance, greater buy-in, and faster change adoption.

Furthermore, resolving concerns throughout the change process builds trust in the change leadership team, puts challenges on the table, gives people an opportunity to influence the change process, and allows people to refocus their energy on the change.

The lesson: When it comes to leading people through change, what you are changing is important, but how you involve people in the change is the difference between failure and success.

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In this chapter, we focused on change at the organizational level and why people resist it. In the next chapter, we share five specific change leadership strategies to lead people through change. These strategies provide details on how leaders can proactively respond to each stage of concern and overcome the Predictable Reasons Why Change Efforts Typically Fail.