Resistance to Change - Working With Supportive Sub-Cultures to Overcome It

Resistance to change is the inevitable consequence when senior management overlook the people related issues that are crucial to success, but there is a further, closely related, reason and that is to do with organisational culture.

There is no single "golden bullet" that guarantees a successful change initiative, and that overcomes all resistance to change. Dealing with resistance to change is based on a composite understanding of a number of inter-related factors, including: clarity about what you are doing and why; good leadership; an appropriate change model and methodology; and clear understanding of what is required to translate the change vision and strategy into actionable steps.

Understanding the cultural composition of your organisation

One often-overlooked yet important dimension of resistance to change lies in a clear understanding of the cultural composition of your organisation.

The process that leads to this understanding involves a thorough cultural mapping and analysis focusing on the key questions of "How we look now" and "How we want to look in future". You need to define a cultural framework for the organisation that identifies the:

(1) Dominant-culture of the company now, how it really is now

(2) Espoused-culture - what senior management think (or wish) the culture is - often reflected in so called "mission statements"

(3) Desired-culture - how it will all look after a successful change initiative

But you need to go deeper than that and specifically, you need to know how to identify and connect with all of the "sub-groups" or sub-cultures in your organisation that will assist or resist the change initiative. These can be categorised as:

"Regressive-subcultures" and "Subversive-subcultures"

There are sub-cultures that are "regressive" and who show resistance to change, and there are sub-cultures that are "subversive" and who will go beyond mere resistance to change and seek to undermine it.

"Emergent-subcultures" and "Aspirational-subcultures"

Fortunately, there are other sub-cultures that are "emergent", moving forward and receptive to change but doing so "unknowingly" (that is without full conscious awareness of the significance of their attitudes and behaviour). These people just naturally and automatically seek to do things in the best way possible, and they are naturally open-minded about change.

Better still tho, there are sub-cultures that are "aspirational" and who embrace change and seek it positively. These sub-cultures behave knowingly (that is with full conscious awareness of what they are doing). These are the people who are constantly seeking to "up their game" and who are naturally change-positive.

It is these last two groups who will be key to overcoming resistance to change and who need to an integral part of what John Kotter refers to as your "coalition for change".