Resistance to Change

Resistance covers a wide range of reactions. Some are active: arguing in meetings, raising formal objections, lobbying against the change. Others are passive: delaying, keeping old workarounds, attending training but never applying it, or falling silent.

Sandy Piderit argued that attitudes to a change have several dimensions, cognitive, emotional and intentional, and that they often point in different directions. A nurse can agree that a new system is safer, feel anxious about using it and still intend to try. Piderit called this mixed state ambivalence and suggested it is more common than outright opposition.

Resistance to change is therefore rarely a simple yes or no; it is a mix of beliefs, feelings and intentions that a change manager needs to understand.

Resistance carries information. People closest to the work often see practical problems that planners miss.

At Larchfield Logistics, dispatchers object to a new routing tool. Instead of pushing harder, the change team asks why. The dispatchers show that the tool ignores customers' delivery time windows. The objection is a design flaw, and fixing it before go-live saves a costly failure.

Jeffrey Ford, Laurie Ford and Angelo D'Amelio argued that change agents contribute to resistance through their own actions and inactions, and that resistance can be a resource for change. Open objection is often easier to work with than silent disengagement.

Resistance to change is therefore worth listening to before anyone tries to reduce it.

Shaul Oreg (2003) developed the Resistance to Change Scale to measure a stable personal tendency: how inclined someone generally is to resist or avoid change, whatever the change. He identified four dimensions:

1. Routine seeking: a preference for stable, familiar routines.
2. Emotional reaction: stress and unease when change is imposed.
3. Short-term focus: attention to immediate inconvenience over longer-term benefits.
4. Cognitive rigidity: reluctance to change one's mind or consider other views.

The scale explains why two people facing the same change can react differently. It describes a tendency, not a verdict: the context of the change and how it is handled still shape behavior. It is a research instrument, not a tool for screening or labeling employees.

Dispositional resistance to change is therefore one input to a diagnosis, never a reason to dismiss someone's concerns.

Most resistance comes from a small set of causes:

• Loss: of status, expertise, relationships, control or a sense of competence.
• Uncertainty: not knowing what the change means for one's job.
• Misunderstanding or low trust: people do not see the reasons, or doubt those giving them.
• A different assessment: people understand the change and believe it is wrong.
• Workload and fatigue: the change arrives on top of other changes and day-to-day pressure.

John Kotter and Leonard Schlesinger grouped causes in a similar way in 1979. Rosabeth Moss Kanter later listed ten reasons people resist, including loss of control, excess uncertainty, surprise, loss of face, concerns about competence, more work and past resentments; she also noted that sometimes the threat is real.

Resistance to change usually has more than one cause at once, and the causes differ between groups.

1. Anticipate. Use the impact assessment to predict where losses and uncertainty will be greatest, and plan for them.
2. Listen and diagnose. The same behavior, such as skipping training, can come from anxiety, missing skills, workload or a real flaw.
3. Match the response to the cause. Information answers misunderstanding; training and coaching answer concerns about competence; involvement answers loss of control; a design change answers a real flaw.
4. Use line managers first and involve the sponsor when resistance persists among groups the team cannot influence.
5. Follow up, because new concerns appear as the change moves from announcement to daily work.

Kotter and Schlesinger described a range of approaches, from education and participation to negotiation and, at the extreme, coercion, and warned that the more forceful options carry costs in trust.

The response to resistance to change should therefore follow the diagnosis, not the other way round.