Change is not for everyone

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Many years ago I was on a travel.
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I was down to one of the Nordic countries and I come into a room to drive a change project from a technology standpoint.
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We were sourcing data from a system that was locally placed in this country.
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I come into the room because the data sourcing part doesn't work.
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In that room.
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It is me, it is another developer that I have with me.
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We are waiting for a person that's locally based and responsible for this operational system.
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It doesn't show up on time.
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5 minutes pass, 10 minutes pass, 15 minutes pass.
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Then he shows up but he doesn't enter the room.
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He just stands there in the doorway with his hands crossed saying I have no idea why I should be in this meeting.
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My system is working perfectly.
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Any problems that you face, they are on your side.
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Our jaws just drops because we are driving an important project and participation from the different source system is absolutely critical to reach our milestones.
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This person did not like that.
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We were proposing that any type of errors was his old system, written in cobalt language, and hadn't been updated from the provider in many, many years.
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He was in control over that system when any error was unthinkable to come from his side.
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He did not want to change.
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If you recognize yourself in this situation, of course it doesn't need to be technology, but you are in some sort of a change process and you are meeting resistance.
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Have you ever thought to yourself that change might not be for everyone?
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Welcome to another episode of transformative change.
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Today, we are going to talk about the topic of actually change itself.
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We talk about organizational change quite often to drive change, because things need to happen In order for us to succeed.
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We need to reorganize, we need to implement, we need to drive forward, but how often do we talk about the actual resistance of change, transformative change.
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This is a podcast that gives you the tools to drive transformative change in the world.
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We are a cross cutting podcast.
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We are mixing topics from different areas from technology, change management, values, principles all of these things to provide you with a tool set that effectively can help you make the world into a better place.
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So what is change?
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Well, change in its basic is going from a current state to a future state.
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Sounds easy enough, but it might be easy if you have a small way to go, if it's just you.
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The only person you have to convince is yourself in this change.
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But what if this change affects a lot of other people?
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So what if you're driving change for instance I don't know your colleagues or your coworkers you want to inflict a small change?
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Another example of my own career was when I started working.
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I could see that the routines of following up and getting back to the customers in the call center I was working didn't really work.
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I suggested a very simple change.
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What if we have a binder with dates to make it easy for us to follow up, since we don't have any system support for that?
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A person in the staff then looks at me and says if that would have worked, we would have already done it.
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Another example of change resistance.
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So is change really for everyone?
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Respectfully, no one.
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I would like to think so.
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But then there is also the saying if you can't change the people, change the people.
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So let us explore a little bit right now on why change is hard.
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So we have to look at people, obviously, look at the individuals.
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I've given these relatively simple examples.
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But people are routine seeking, and routine seeking and emotional reactions, because we know that people often have a natural disposition to seek routine, and when you seek routine, that means that you might have emotional reactions to changes that are opposed upon them.
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So when you have something that you're used to doing, you built your entire identity into this.
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You are the expert and people.
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They tie their identity to it.
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And we know that people they seek and prefer predictability and comfort of established routines.
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Everything else is taking them outside of their comfort zone.
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And this becomes so interesting from my perspective that even though you as an individual might see the benefit of a change, you might prefer the established routines because you know what to expect.
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Everything else is something that will affect you quite a lot emotionally.
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Short-term focus is another topic reluctant to change the thinking patterns or focus on the short-term impacts rather than the long-term benefits.
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This is also some sort of cognitive response or rigidity.
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You see the long-term benefits potentially, but this is a major contributing factor that the short-term I mean.
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This goes for a lot of different things.
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Exercise is one of these examples.
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We know that exercising gives you greater health benefits over time.
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You need to be persistent and have an ongoing effort, otherwise those gains that you're doing in the gym, they are lost.
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So what do we do?
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We stay home and we seek the immediate short-term, which might be having candy or watching TV shows or playing video games instead of going to the gym.
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Then we have the personality or organizational context.
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Individuals have different personalities, we have different baggage, we have different know-how, along with the context of the organization they're part of, significantly affect the attitude towards change.
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These attitudes can influence job satisfaction, commitments and intentions to stay or lead the organization.
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Imagine you have to change a team of experts.
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You have one or two that are the culture bearers in that specific team.
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They feel like they're on top of the world.
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The organization can't exist without them.
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They are extremely negative to everything that has changed a lot, because that is threatening their position, their identity.
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So they are actively working against the change.
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Then we also can look into the individual.
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So various personality and organizational factors, such as employee-yee management relationship, personality traits, participation in decision-making, job security, can also influence the resistance to change.
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The impact of these factors is often mediated by individual disposition towards change, anticipated impact of change and attitude towards change.
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So what can we learn from this?
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Well, in a nutshell, if you are involved into the process of change, that means most likely you will be more positively inclined towards the change in general.
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So what does this mean?
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Well, I would say your personality or your overall involvement into the organization's decision-making has a direct impact.
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I think it's interesting to see that what we tend to do in large organizations, especially in terms of change and bigger changes, is that we hide, we say everything is secret, although we know in order to get full acceptance of changes, often in organizations, we need to involve people.
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So why do we continuously say wait until the decision is made, wait until the change is hitting you?
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What I've seen in many organizations is that one day, management calls for a meeting, saying now it is time for us to tell you about the big plans and this is how they're going to impact you.
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Of course, people are going to be reluctant to change.
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I would be as well that one day somebody just comes and say hey, your job is obsolete, we're going to automate it.
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So if you don't have all of these inclinations towards change, resistance, if you are seeking some sort of conformity, why would you be positive to change?
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So, involvement, participation in decision-making, all of these topics can, of course, influence the resistance to change.
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And then the final big topic to this we are people.
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That means that we have a lot of built-in defense mechanisms.
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We have a lot of biases.
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Individuals may use various types of defense mechanisms, both adaptive or maladaptive, to cope with stress of organizational change.
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Probably, or hopefully, many of you listening have seen that the change journey, that there is the resistance, that there is the acceptance, and then their hopelessness, despair and all of those things.
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So we assume, as we have the different type of defense mechanisms built in and our experiences as individuals have gone through a lot of bad changes in the path to have bad experience of trusting people, that will make us more inclined.
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So the best way of getting people to actually accepting change is to talk to them, understand individual journeys, communication, communication, communication.
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This is really the key topic of successful change management in organizations.
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So, in conclusion, resistance to change is very much influenced by a complex interplay, by individual differences, organizational context and different psychological factors.
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So if people just believe that change management is another strategy project, then they're wrong.
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We know that successful implementation of complex changes requires a lot of focus of change management, adaptation, change agents it is traditional how do we drive change?
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So understanding these different factors can absolutely help in managing and facilitating change more effectively.
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And if you are a leader or an aspirational leader that wants to get ahead.
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Communicate that's one of the key topics Involve individuals.
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Take almost more time on understanding what might stop the change.
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It is not the technology, because technology we can make work.
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It is people.
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Using the technology is going to be hard in understanding.
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So understand people and you'll understand the change management process.
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To this, what are some of the tools, then, that we can use to do this?
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I'm not going to say sheet, but, in a way, understanding better.
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So one of the things you can start with, for instance, is utilize emotional appeals.
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So employ different emotional element in the different type of persuasions that you're doing in order to get some sort of change acceptance.
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That, of course, can't be the only points, because even though changes are emotional from the people perspective, there needs to be rational argument as well.
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So prepare these things, don't take them out in the moment, but understand emotions that play alongside rational arguments will take you a long way, because emotions play a crucial role in how employees perceive and react to change.
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Effective communication that taps into the emotional aspect can significantly boost the acceptance of change initiatives.
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Do a visionary presentation of the change.
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Adopt different tools and technique in your presentation.
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Technique to make the people that are affected by the change that they can also associate themselves with that.
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If they associate today with the different systems or their jobs, make them feel emotionally connected to this change and you'll see a much higher acceptance of the change itself.
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And this takes us to the change communication.
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So have effective change communication, because it's vital for succeeding.
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It should be designed to align with employees regular to a regular focus, encouraging proactive behaviors like job crafting, which enhances the adjustment to change.
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I think one of the key things I took with me during my career is the better I became at communicating, the easier it was to get people to accept the changes that I wanted to drive.
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It was an aha moment for me when I was doing presentation going from shards.
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We were very rational only, but then building a storyline alongside with these rational arguments completely changed the vibe of the room.
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So you also have to see this almost as a process, almost like winning an election.
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You have to have campaigns Prior to implementing a change plan.
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You need to persuade the organization.
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As a leader, you might not see this as your job, but it is.
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If you're a successful leader, you need to very much go out there, persuade people, get people on board, have people being change agent, standing behind your changes include setting a framework for interpreting change related information and managing the mood to support the implementation.
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One of the key things with all of this we've talked about people is the uncertainty that's involved in change.
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You need to manage this uncertainty effectively.
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Imagining you're coming to a management team or a team of engineers doesn't really matter which type of team, but they're affected by this change.
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That means the uncertainty of the outcome is very unclear for them.
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There is this saying that the first one to leaves will be the best ones.
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I'm not sure if it's true or not, but if there are uncertainty and if you're having a lot of high performance individuals, they have no problem jumping ship because they get a job anywhere.
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A lot of people are, of course, very loyal to their employees, but still, if the uncertainty becomes too big, they will start looking for different alternatives.
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You need to manage this uncertainty very effectively.
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Effective change communication involves managing the uncertainty.
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One of the key things to do here might just also be to address it.
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Hey, we know that there is a lot of uncertainty in this change.
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Our purpose of this change is to and then you explain, just making people aware that this is not something forgotten.
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These are not dream plans, but this is your reality.
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You need to remove the uncertainty by revealing rather you need to remove it the information rather than concealing it.
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Reducing uncertainty through collective planning and maintaining the trust with the organization.
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Once more, have people involved, not just being recipients of the change itself.
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Then, of course, organizational readiness for the change.
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Organization readiness for change includes shared result resolve, change commitment, belief in collective capability.
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The readiness is influence, how much the members value the change and the price of implementation capability.
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So, having the organization ready for these things and make sure that they accept the change, involve the employees in the change process, because the involvement can reduce the cynicism that you're seeing, this acceptance of these changes as well.
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And then you need to have organizations that are capable of pursuing both incremental and discontinuous innovation.
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Because this discontinuous innovation, you need to understand that the change you're going through is uncertainty.
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So having some of these strategies requires you to have a comprehensive understanding of the organization's unique context.
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Every changes are different and the tailored approach that addresses both the rational and emotional aspects of the change.
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Change is not for everyone I think that's quite certain, but everybody will go to change at some point in their life and if you're driving change, hopefully some of these insights and suggestions and tools that we've been discussing here now gives you some sort of head start in how to manage the complex environment that an organization really is.
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Thank you for this time, now looking forward for the next.