Resistance to change

Objective

Nothing should concern you more than statements such as:

• ‘this is the way we do things here’;
• ‘this has always worked for other clients’;
• ‘we have always done things this way’.

Hearing any one of them should be like a red rag to a bull, and – fairly or unfairly – always lead you to believe that whoever is making the statements is defending a status quo that is ripe for change.

Leadership is always and inevitably about change – this is, of course, your leadership perspective. But it is also about others accepting the inevitability of change.

As you engage in your organisation, you must be acutely aware of resistance to change, however it is expressed.

Context

Your role is about forcing change, and your team’s role is to accept the inevitability of change, so this will in turn provoke some clashes between openness and defensiveness. When you hear the words ‘we have always done things this way’ or (in response to a suggested change) ‘we don’t do things like that here’, what you are actually witnessing is:

• resistance, because the status quo is more comfortable and change is just hard;
• defensiveness because of individuals’ concerns that their credibility and past performance is being challenged;
• complacency because of an essential lack of conviction;
• fear about changes to roles, and potential loss of employment.

These responses will often be deeply rooted, especially where they betray vulnerability. Responding will demand from you a conviction and steadfastness that will be frequently challenged and undermined, and you will need to maintain focus on long-term goals rather than short-term ups-and-downs.

Challenge

You should always be prepared for the status quo to take hold – even one you have been instrumental in creating. So you must be attuned to hearing defensiveness when you are demanding change – and you should always insist on change in a business environment where success will depend on continuous improvement.

When you hear statements that implicitly or explicitly say ‘we don’t understand why you want to do things differently’, you must expose how such statements are riddled with blindness to the need for change. You must stress, and be heard to say, that:

• the onus is always on a leader to demand change, and on their colleagues to respond openly;
• to concentrate on how previous things have worked successfully is never a wholly adequate reason to not moving forward;
• to cite established processes and procedures suggests that change should conform to them, rather than the processes being adapted to the needs of change.

No leader ever wants to convey the impression they are impervious to others’ views, nor that there are no legitimate challenges to their opinions. But when you are fixed on your purpose, you must be single-minded in your determination to meet resistance with both conviction and an irrepressible belief in success.

Success

So how do leaders challenge resistance to change successfully and also ensure that they themselves never become the status quo that is itself the problem?

First, you challenge your team. You must believe and be heard to say that that no matter how successful the team has been and how thoroughly it feels it understands its market, its dynamics and structures, it must continuously reassess its competitive positioning. The team must be aware of:

• complacency – success may breed a dangerous complacency;
• the status quo – reliance on this reveals a failure to understand that all business involves a continuous journey;
• continuous change – change is not something you do every so often, it is a corporate way of life.

The team must know that these factors apply to it no less than to its competitors. If they doubt this challenge just remind them of some real examples: take the fate of Kodak, or more recently the troubles facing Nokia and RIM (BlackBerry).

Next, you challenge yourself. Building a business or a team is an arduous and stressful process, albeit an exhilarating one. Along the way you take risks, face major hurdles and invest a great deal in building your team. It is an emotional rollercoaster, frequently challenging your stamina, your self-belief and your will-power. Establishing a status quo as a safe haven is undeniably attractive, but recognising this very attractiveness is the key to avoiding being one of those ‘we always do it this way’ businesses. As an effective leader, you spurn safety for danger, status quo for change. However demanding this may be, it means:

• getting out – you never cease meeting other business people in their world to spot emerging trends;
• standing back – you regularly do this to assess the appropriateness of your organisation’s strategy to market needs;
• assessing management – you constantly assess the effectiveness of your management structure;
• challenging – you relentlessly challenge the ‘customer journey’ and demand to see customer complaints so that you know from the coalface what may not be working;
• listening – you listen to what your colleagues really say for evidence of ‘we always do it this way’ attitudes;
• investing – you invest in time with customers and listen to what they say about your organisation’s performance, and ensure that improvement processes are driven by customer perspectives;
• refreshing – you face the reality, hard as it may be, that your close-knit team will itself need refreshing with new approaches and attitudes.

Above all, you have to display humble self-awareness – an openness to change that accepts that constant change is not a reflection of failure, but is your responsibility.

Pitfalls

You must guard against being so driven towards improvement that change itself becomes problematic. So beware of the following.

• You excessively criticise the past – if it is the ‘past’ that is described as the problem, rather than specific features of it, then you may imply that all previous ideas and experience have low value, and you may unintentionally suppress or sacrifice significant knowledge and insights.
• You excessively criticise staff associated with the past – signals that people associated with the past may, by definition, be a problem will devalue their legitimate experience and may undermine their commitment to support change; precisely the reverse outcome to the desired one.
• Your reactions to the status quo are overhasty – knee-jerk reactions to perceived inadequacies may feel good, but you always need to learn why things are as they are; a failure to grasp hidden complexities actually undermines the change process.
• Your over-insistence on change is at the expense of necessary praise – commentary on an organisation’s culture and performance should be balanced. If you appear biased towards blaming error, then respect for you as a leader will be undermined; staff will always accept challenge and some criticism when it is evenly balanced with deserved praise.

Leaders’ checklist

• From your first day as leader, emphasise the importance of change and be humble enough to acknowledge when you yourself are making changes.
• Talk about change positively – embed it in the organisation’s culture as a norm, not an event.
• Be brave in regularly standing back from a business in which you may have invested emotionally – ask yourself what would be your perspective if you were new.
• Always solicit feedback from customers and find ways of demonstrating that their feedback has been noted and actioned.
• If you ever hear your staff talking about how ‘we always do it this way’, make it clear that such approaches are wholly unacceptable.