Change can be defined by a great number of adjectives: scary, painful, liberating, disorienting, exhilarating, empowering, frustrating, fulfilling, confusing and challenging. While change may be logical, more than logical, it is emotional. Oftenly can be said that it is human nature to resist change; however, it is not really the change that is resisted, but the fear of the unknown. Effective communication can overcome that fear and make the change process existing. Leadership can implement change by establishing and maintaining. Business are subject to many forces which create the need for change. If unrecognized, two negative forces will doom a company: internal aging and external advancing technology.
The one certainty in the uncertain world of management is change. Change is faster than ever before. The reason to change is instilled within the organization and widely shared through data, demonstration or demand. The need for change must exceed its resistance.
It must be faced the fact that for a change to occur, people must own it. If people do not go through the inner process of transition, they will not be able to develop the new behaviour and attitudes to accept the change. Change efforts that disregard the process of transition are difficult.
Change situation is interpreted by an individual according to his or her attitudes. The key concept is that of psychological advantage. People do not automatically resist all changes. You probably would not resist a generous raise, though you might resist a promotion if it involved uprooting your family at a difficult time.
Analysing the reason of resistance occurs gives people insight into how to reduce it. For one thing, it is clear that change is usually perceived by people as something being done to them over which they have no control. Resistance to change thus becomes a desperate attempt to regain control over one's environment.
Both research and experience reminds us that although a change can be implemeted quickly, the psychological process of transition takes time. Changes can take a very long time, if they are not well managed.
It should never lose sight of due to it is not so much that people are starting something new but that they are stopping something old. It must not be failed to understand the human side of change and tactics needed to make change successful.
Attitudes play a central role in determining a person's response to change. The key concept is that of psychological advantage. People do not automatically resist all changes. It is probably would not be resisted a generous raise, for example, though it might be resisted a promotion if it involved uprooting its family at a difficult time.
Managing Resistance to change is a methodology that is designed to help people in organizations face resistance and cross the street, to actually manage the transitions experienced within the organizational change.
Organizations are continually immersed in transition. And, since change is an inevitable part of organizational life, resistance is correspondingly inherent and should be reframed, explored and worked, not eradicated or fixed. In fact, the process of surfacing and discussing resistance is a part of the learning that all organizations must do to survive. The data of resistance is critical to an orgaization's development, productivity and ability to make change successful.
Why do some people resist change ? First of all, an innovator or change agent, perceives as resistance may be the natural tendency for many people to wait and see how things go. Most people want to know, if the potential benefits of change, any change, outweigh possible risks and the inconvenience of disrupting habitual and comfortable ways of doing things. Traditionalists, especially, are concerned that what they have come to love and respect about the organization may forever disappear. Traditionalists are likely to ask and it is a reasonable question "what we have always done has made us who we are and is the reason for our success, so why should we change?"
Some people are ready for change now and others need some time. Research into adopting innovations suggests that only a small percentage of people are immediately ready for change. Members of an organization are likely to fall in one of the following groups:
Innovators: 2.5% of the total group
Early adopters: 13.5 %
Early majority: 34.0 %
Later majority: 34.0 %
Traditionalists: 16 %
Each segment has its own needs and concerns. Some are listed in the chart below along with suggested approaches to involve all groups in the change process. It is important not to insist on uniformity or unanimity in this process. As well known, people are different.
What to expect
How to involve
Innovators
-Want to experiment, create.
-Impatience at what they perceive to be slow progress.
-Discuss realistic expectations for the change process
-Provide numerous educational resources for ongoing learning
-Provide opportunities to "try things out"
Early Adopters
-Want to try early. Enjoy status, self-knowledge, helping others.
-Fearful of saying or doing the wrong thing and not having enough information
-Provide numerous educational resources for ongoing learning.
-Emphasize the reasons that change is important, including the moral argument
-Show how other organizations have effectively made the change.
Early majority
-Will wait initially. Want to see benefits and peer acceptance.
-Are not convinced that change is beneficial or will work.
-Emphasize the benefits of change for the organization (i.e. better recruitment, retention, effectiveness etc.)
-Share examples of small and large successes within the organization to show that the efforts are making difference
-Use specific examples, statistics and hard evidence whenever possible.
Later majority
-Want to delay. Will join if there is endorsement by authority and change by the majority.
-May question all efforts, look for apparent failures, not offer any assistance, actively opposed the efforts.
-Respected leaders must provide strong and continuous support for the change effort
-Listen to this group's fears and take them into account when planning communications, programs and policies.
-Remember that seeing the early majority become committed is perhaps the most important motivation for the later majority to adopt the change.
Traditionalists
-Want to avoid entirely. They will join to reduce their discomfort with being out of the majority and to comply with standards.
-Fear that they will lose what is most important to them about the organization and their role in it. May vigorously oppose the changes.
-Help this group express their fears. Indicate wherever possible how the changes will enhance what they valuse in the organization. Listen carefully so you learn what it is they value that they perceive as being threatened.
-Be satisfied with behavior change: do not demand enthusiasm or full agreement.
Most people take a wait and see approach. Gradually, as they see positive results, more and more embrace the innovation.
One implication of the above is that resistance must be planned for. change should not be expected without some level of resistance - a lot of people just are not ready yet. Resistance will provide organizations with critival information regarding what people value about the organization and their experience with it. It is possible to be more strategic by listening carefully and responding respectfully when resistance is voices.
Over time, momentum for change should build as more people take on responsibility, see results, and become more at ease with the changes. Each segment focuses on the one ahead of it. Early adopters follow innovators, the early majority follows the early adopters, and so forth. Gradually the more resistant members may well accept the changes even if not enthusiastically. Like with any policy or program, there may not be complete unanimity, a few people may never fully accept the changes. So focus on those most ready to change. Allow those who are most resistant to opt-out of change initially. Continue to communicate about the efffort to everyone throughout, however.
Most likely, the proposed changes call for behaviour that is unfamiliar. People may fear they will not be able to succeed in the new era. They may not agree with the chosen direction, although they may agree that there is a problem. The introduction of new people and ways can make the established members feel self-conscious and uncomfortable as they are required to think about behaviours and practices that were taken for granted.
Resistance may be due to any or all of the following:
Lack of information, uncertainty
Disagreement with the ideas
Mistrust
Not wanting to lose power or control
Disruption of the well-know status quo
Fear of failure
Vulnerability
Long-standing conflicts
More work
Some of the factors may be under the surface and not fully recignized even by the resisters themselves.
Change may strike directly at security needs by putting one's job, career or valued relationships on the line. Many changes make life more difficult, at least initially, by being imposed or disrupting comfortable patterns of acting and interacting. Some involve genuine inconvenience. Many changes are resisted because the subjects of change question the motivates or wisdom of those making the change. Changes are frequently introduced in ways that disparage old ways of doing things.
Implementing organizational change initiatives invariably involves people changing themselves. The change you want to make cannot happen until people decide to change. Some discomfort inevitable, but organizations generally fail to minimize the negative consequences of transition. Workers fear they can not conform and succeed in the post-change work environment. They are often confused about why organizations make the change, exactly what the scope of the change is, and how their jobs will be impacted. Most organizations do little to allay such fears and concerns. If they did, implementing organizational change can be much faster and done more effectively.
Resistance occurs at the boundary. When an organization institutes any change, no matter how small or large, role, task and authority boundaries change. People may deny that a boundary exists or may be reluctant to engage or cross it. They may lack an understanding about it or be put into mis-cast or ill-defined roles. Tasks within these roles and authority relationships may be unclear. To minimize resistance, a group needs to understand and manage their dynamics and establish clear boundaries by:
Defining purpose, goals and objectives and being explicit about the group or individual task;
Developing clear and understandable roles for all group members;
Understanding and talking about the authority structure;
Discussing as many of the real dilemmas, issues, situations, constraints and so on, within the group; and
Measuring and evaluating individual and group performance and progress towards their collective goals.
Resistance in groups is natural. The most difficult task of any group is to sim ultaneously explore its dynamic process (including resistance), do its work and explain itself to its parts and stakeholders - communicating across its boundaries.
Resistance to change is not often strongly expressed when the proposed changes are initially unveiled because there is widespreed denial that they will be pushed through. Not long after denial a period of depression will typically follow. Depression is the critival period which must be made as brief as possible to allow change makers to at least conditionally accept the changes and begin testing new behaviours.
It is necessary to recognize and accept the fact that little progress will be made toward implementing change, so long as change makers have not yet made is past the depression stage. Their effectiveness in the status quo environment will also deterriorate. Therefore, it is critical to focus on getting the change makers on to trial and acceptance as quickly as possible. It is also important to not get ahead of the fame by focusing on other change management issues when large numbers of people are not yet ready for acceptance. You must finish the unfreezing job and move change makers through the depression stage before real change can happen.
At the heart of resistance is the fear of loss. Resistance is a result of this fear, an expression of how people feel about the change efort at hand. When things change, people begin to worry about what they might lose, including job, income, position/status, reputation, turf, influence, responsibility, expertise, certainty/security, control/freedom of choise, effectiveness, routines/familiar procedures, relationships/mentors/group membership, meaning, future/dreams/plans, identity. These are not comprehensive, we can all think of more losses that we face, rationally and otherwise, when confronted with change. These loses are real, real feelings that are stirred when confronted with letting go with the known during a transition. It can be seen that this fear of loss disables the ability to be fully dedicated to any change.
In addition to the emotions connected to these losses, most also reflect a real technical shift. Any change ultimately affects the various boundaries within an organization. By boundaries, it can be referred to the technical, formal and informal structures that can be summarized into three categories: roles, tasks and authority. The alignment of these boundaries is what becomes skewed during any change process and most orgnizations in transition do not spend much time thinking about how the intended or implemented change impacts role, task and authority boundaries, particularly in a dynamic sense. Resistance, then, is the way can be protected themselves by people from the binds caused by boundary shifts. The key to working with resistance lies in the ability of an organization to understand and define the shifts in role, task and authority associated with any change.
The successful organization will be structured for learning, innovation and constant change and for the systematic abandonment of whatever is established, customary, familiar and comfortable. A manager can safely assume that a person with some knowledge will have to acquire new knowledge every four or five years or become obsolete. Learning is essential to mastering change. Learning must be lifelong process.
Change and uncertainty is managed by having a plan for the future. With a plan, uncertainty ceases to be a threat and becomes an opportunity. When the opportunity of change and uncertainty knocks, the successful business will continuously create the resources of people, technology, and knowledge to respond.
Employees view the change process differently. They often view change as disruptive. A successful change program reuqires that employees understand why the need for change is necessary. Employees must buy into the change program. Employees' commitments must be linked to the company's change outcomes.
An effective measurement system would be specific, simple to understand, creative and involve both managers and employees. The results should be visually displayed so that employees can track their progress. A consistent process of measuring the results of the change initiative combined with a rewards program that reinforces the desired behavior is the backbone of an effective change program.
Successful change managers provide a compelling rationale for change, set challenging goals and provide visible leadership and commitment. They secure "buy-in" from people who understand why change is necessary and what they can do to help bring it about. Their aspirations reflect their capability to implement. They also recognise the differing attitudes, behaviours and approaches of winners and losers. They equip people to bring about desired changes and help them to operate like winners.
Many people may be closer to securing the benefits of effective change management than they realise. Having spent so long wandering in the desert they may fail to notice the clues that water might be near by. Sometimes it is just a case of identifying and tackling certain losing behaviours and putting in place missing pieces of the jig saw puzzle required for successful transformation.
Once a change has been accepted and implemented by a group, the initiators of the change must keep working with the members and emphasize the positive effects of the change. If this is not done, the group may slowly lapse into its old habits. The whole process of unfreezing, changing and refreezing may take a long period of time.
As such conclusions suggest, the multifaceted complexity of human nature, both its imperfections and its resources, crucially affect the way changed unfold and consolidate.
"Progress is impossible without change and those who can not change their minds can not change anything." George Bernard Shaw
