Resistance to Change: How is Resistance Related to Change Capacity?

Note: this is a five-part series. Read Part 1 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

by Katherine Sanders and Patrick Farrell

INTRODUCTION

Organizational capacity for change is the overall capability of an organization to either effectively prepare for or respond to an unpredictable environment (Saylor Academy, 2012). We’d add that change capacity is also accepting the challenge and responsibility of intentionally helping to shape our future environment.

CHANGE CAPACITY IS A SYSTEMS ISSUE

By definition, organizational change capacity is a work system attribute, a product of the capacities of each part of an interdependent work system. The elements of a work system are:

• People
• Job Design
• Technology (ideas & equipment)
• Environment (physical & social)
• Organization (structures, rewards, policies, procedures, culture, etc.)

It’s common to focus on the people in the system as either problems (change-resistors) or solutions (inspirational influencers). However, focusing on individual behaviors cannot reform system issues.

In order to address system capacity, we must address limiting structures and processes embedded in the rest of the system. Our people can show us where these system issues are and help us decide what to do about them.

RESISTANCE IS A WINDOW INTO ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE CAPACITY

In the majority of situations, employee resistance is situational. People are giving voice to issues that limit their capacity for additional change. For example, if jobs are designed with unrealistic workloads, employees will not have the capacity to engage in additional collaborative or creative processes. Until the structural issue (chronic overload) is dealt with, it will be nearly impossible to increase the organization’s change capacity.

Similarly, if any of elements of the work system are working in opposition to each other or the changes you’re attempting to make, organizational capacity will suffer. For example, if we attempt to implement a mentoring program while people are struggling to keep up with technology upgrades, the time and energy needed to address both these initiatives (along with the ‘regular’ work) will require implicit or explicit prioritization. It is likely that the technology demands will be perceived as most important and will work against the capacity-building intentions of the new mentoring program. In this situation it might be necessary to phase initiatives so that they do not interfere with each other.

INSTEAD OF “OVERCOMING” RESISTANCE TO CHANGE, RESPOND TO ITS CAUSES

From a systems perspective, these common questions are problematic:

• How do we overcome resistance?
• How do we deal with resistant employees?

Overcoming resistance implies that we can either influence, convince or coerce people to give up objections. Instead of “dealing” with individuals, we must act on the systems issues people are voicing.

Listen to people as they point out the structures and processes that diminish the organization’s capacity for change. Fix the structures that can be fixed and continue to look for ways to address the ones that can’t be changed right now. As we listen to people and respond to their concerns by fixing system issues, we build trust as well as change capacity.