"I need to remain competitive but have a problem with my employees resisting
change. I get frustrated because the innovations will actually help them. What
technique(s) can I use to ensure more acceptance for new ideas?" TD, Oregon "I need to remain competitive but have a problem with my employees resisting
change. I get frustrated because the innovations will actually help them. What
technique(s) can I use to ensure more acceptance for new ideas?" TD, Oregon
THE INDUSTRY ADVISOR
INSTALLING SUCCESSFUL CHANGES
By Gene Levine - www.genelevine.com
Your letter implies that your competition is feverishly working towards
improving their service to your customers. Well, after all, isn’t it their job to put
you out of business and your employees out of work? So, you’re correct in wanting to
get the edge over them.
Change resistance takes many familiar forms beyond the "It won’t work", that you encounter. Other forms of resistance are; persistent reduction of output; increase in the number of chronic quarrels; requests for transfers; hostility; strikes and, of course, requests for financial "bribes".
Learn from Thomas Edison, who once said, "Society is never prepared to receive any invention. Every new thing is resisted and takes years for the inventor to get the people to listen to him and years more before it can be introduced." Now remember, that statement came from one greatest inventors who ever lived and if he had trouble, you can expect it too. So, Rule one is always anticipate that changes will be resisted.
Rule two is; The greater the potential benefit and the more radical the departure from habit and tradition, the greater the task becomes to gain its acceptance. While fundamental or major changes cause resistance to inertia, even simple changes whose value is recognized may be resisted and even fought bitterly – if they are not presented correctly. Those are the key words in this discussion; "presented correctly".
Let’s see if I can extract some information out of my book "How to Attract, Hold and Motivate People to Work" that could help you better understand the dynamics of change. You need to know what actually causes the resistance you speak of, so you can work at improving your ratio of successful changes.
Based on my experience, when changes are not presented correctly they immediately trigger one or more fears in people. Sensing (improperly presented) changes, people normally feel they may lose any or all of the following: Earnings (all or part), their job, friends, status, recognition, skill, chance for advancement, favorable working conditions, easy work, ability, habit and/or right of office.
When you know these real concerns and pre-deal with them, most change resistance is defused. Actually, what employees resist is not technical change but social change – the change in their human relationships that generally accompany technical change. Rule Three therefore is to think of change as having both a social and technical aspect. The technical aspect of any change is making measurable modifications in the physical routine of the job. The social aspect of change refers to the attitudes of those affected by the change and their thoughts of how it will alter their established relationships in the organization.
Look at the typical manager who, for the sake of expediency, goes over to or brings a group of employees together and says something like, "From now on you will do things this way. I will follow up to make sure you do it my way and anyone not doing it my way will be fired!"
Let’s examine what has just occurred. Without a doubt there will be immediate resistance to change. This will be evidenced by expressions of aggression against that management style, such as: conflicts with methods engineering, hostility towards supervision, deliberate restriction of production and lack of cooperation.
Why? In a nutshell, those employees were treated as if they had no useful knowledge of their own jobs. What they heard was that they are not skilled and efficient but rather, they are only capable of doing things wrong. How else could those employees interpret this act except as a threat to their usual working relationships and job security? If the employees did comply, the results would not be long lasting and in a while, management would be back out again saying the same thing.
Rule Four is . . .
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