This time we will focus on the concept of “resistance” focusing on in detail on the resistance to change.
Resistance is a concept always present in change management dissertations because at the end is the essence of it: no matter how hard and how well you prepare for your actions, there will always be a group of people that will tend to create inertia to the objective you want to reach.
” […] By “resistance” they mean those people you come across who want no part of that change, and they go on to suggest which strategy you can use to sweep that obstacle aside.
Nothing is said, however, on the subject of the change agent’s own resistance: their resistant to resistance. […]”.
Pretty interesting in this is a pattern I met many times in my professional experience, both in consulting and in big companies: people sometime are not resisting to that specific change but they are objecting on ANY kind of change; so don’t take it to personal and move ahead.
In this conditions is like a trench battle and will obtain the result of deteriorating your energy, falling in the typical one-against-many situation.
Sometimes the suggestion you may receive is to behave towards some people in order to “separate them” and bring them onboard one by one but, even if it is a working strategy can bring to some complexities, being quite tricky. The old latin saying “Divide et impera” is a great way of acting in most of the places and situations, but unfortunately, it doesn’t always work in change management.
Change management requires a unique team to achieve its main result, having a performing and united team.
In my career as a manager I approached many time the topic of change management because, especially as a consultant, most of the things you are going to do will result in something changing.
So what to do at the end?
Just try to approach change management in a holistic way, trying to specialize onboarding for different roles, but without loosing the main objective of having all people up and running in a short while.
Focus on communicating, explaining and onboarding to the new: nothing is more fearful of the unknown.
