Resistance to change and dealing with resistance to change is a subject about which much has been written and it remains a recurring subject in comments and questions posted on my website and about which people email me. This is hardly surprising given the 70% failure rate.
In the context of dealing with resistance to change, it is important to understand the critical disconnects - where they are and how they arise and how they impact employee responses to change. In my experience there are at least 2 significant areas of disconnection between management and employees.
(1) Management are detached from direct feedback from the frontline and the human consequences of their decisions
The further up the "greasy pole" we look, the greater the disconnection from the frontline. Change management practitioner Neil Farmer of UK based Informal Networks Ltd describes this as:
"... a deadly case of an inverse correlation - on the one hand growing ego and confidence, and on the other diminishing feedback, from source."
Once junior executives start their upward ascent into management they generally do not receive training in the need for and skills of acquiring and processing feedback. Not do they get much, if any, training in the critical interactive skills that are essential to long-lasting success in organisational management. This lack of training and awareness of the need for feedback from the frontline is reinforced with the growing confidence of the developing young executive.
Perversely, the lack of feedback feeds the growing sense of confidence of the executive and as long as he (or she) is seen to be relatively successful then their upward progress continues.
The other factor that feeds the rising executive's growing sense of confidence is the "business by default" factor - this is the business momentum which occurs when long standing businesses tend to keep winning and holding business just because they always have and not least because of the commitment of their frontline staff. So rather than recognising that much of their perceived success is not in fact attributable to their own skills, their confidence grows.
Eventually the manager becomes so far removed from the source of feedback about the actual consequences of management decisions they make, that they completely lose touch with the frontline.
It is from this position of managerial experience and perceived strength that so many change initiatives are conceived and launched.
(2) Up to 75% of an organisation's natural leaders and informal networks sit outside of the formal management structure
In start ups, and very small businesses, staff have a direct and in-depth connection with what they do and the results that are generated. There is usually a strong sense of ownership of tasks. Lines of communication between staff and the business owner will usually be informal and direct, and a strong sense of community develops.
Roll the clock forward a few years and, if the business is fortunate enough to still be in existence and succeeding, the owners may decide to expand.
At this point, processes become more formalised and structured, and layers of management are introduced. As the business continues to expand the owners/investors seek to expand further and having developed a successful business model look to develop their initial success through replication.
Whilst replication is essential to business expansion it inevitably introduces a level of "de-skilling" as business processes are defined and documented, and increasing levels of IT and automation are introduced.
It is around this point that employees experience increasing levels of disconnection from the informality and easy communication of the original (and smaller) business as the formality of the "newish" management structures and business processes are introduced and increasing numbers of new employees are recruited.
Roll the clock forward a few more years and management are looking to maintain or increase productivity and profitablity by introducing process improvements. The disconnect increases...
Roll the clock on a bit further and the first disconnect we discussed above - "Management detachment from direct feedback"- really starts to kick in and so the disconnect increases...
To compensate for this loss of immediacy, intimacy, camaraderie and the ability to resolve stuff quickly without recourse to formal processes and structures, staff develop their own informal "work-arounds" to problems and informal networks occur naturally and "natural leaders" emerge.
This then is the genesis of what is referred to as the "shadow organisation" and what leads to the proliferation of an organisation's informal networks. This is also the fertile soil in which much resistance to change grows.
And yet it is within these informal networks that disconnected management can rediscover the energy and dynamics to successfully deal with resistance to change...
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