Posts Tagged ‘resistance’

Diehards die hard

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

Some people are so set in their ways that they resist innovative ideas even when their benefits are demonstrable.

At the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City Dick Fosbury amazed the audience when he did something revolutionary - he went over backwards. The traditional way of jumping was to use the straddle.  Fosbury won the gold medal but in the next few years most of the top athletes did not copy him.  They had too much time, effort, practise and muscle memory invested in the technique that they had been using for years.

Fosbury’s innovation was derided.  The U.S. Olympic coach Payton Jordan said,  ”Kids imitate champions. If they try to imitate Fosbury, he will wipe out an entire generation of high jumpers because they will all have broken necks.”

Fosbury knew that he landed on his shoulders not his neck and there have been very few injuries with his method.  But that did not stop his detractors.  They were stuck in their ways.

“The problem with something revolutionary like that was that most of the elite athletes had invested so much time in their technique and movements that they didn’t want to give it up, so they stuck with what they knew,” Fosbury said.

It took almost ten years before his method came to dominate the sport and nowadays all the top performers use it.

You have probably seen it yourself – diehards will stick to their tried and trusted methods. We sometimes call them the office CAVE men – Colleagues Against Virtually Everything!

Paul Sloane.

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How to Counter Resistance to Change

Thursday, May 21st, 2009

Peter Bregman on the Harvard Business site writes an interesting article on how to handle resistance to change

He says, ‘People resist being controlled. And so 70% of all corporate change efforts fail.

Here’s what’s interesting: people freely choose to make major life changes every day.  We move, get married, start families, face challenges, learn new technologies, change jobs, and develop new skills.  Not all of these changes are smooth.  But most of the time we seek those changes ourselves and make them successfully.

So why are people willing to change in one situation and resistant to it in another?  Because people don’t resist change, they resist being changed.’

He advises three steps to overcome this issue:

  1. Define the outcome you want.
  2. Suggest a path to achieve it.
  3. Allow people to reject your path as long as they choose an alternate route to the same destination.

In other words,  set the destination but empower people to choose how they get there.

Paul Sloane

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Resistance to Change

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008

We had a lively meeting of the BQF Innovation Group yesterday.  It was kindly hosted by MITIE at their offices in the Counting House near London Bridge.  They presented a case study on overcoming resistance to change in a major corporate outsourcing project.  We then had a workshop session where we discussed change initiatives and the reasons why people resisted change.  The main reasons we identified were:

  1. Fear of the unknown
  2. Suspicion of motives
  3. Bad prior experiences of change leading to low expectations
  4. People stuck in their ways
  5. Lack of self-confidence about accomplishing the change
  6. Change seen as unnecessary
  7. Evolutionary change seen as extended pain
  8. People not used to commercial bottom-line thinking

We then carried out a lotus blossom exercise on each of the these 8 items and 8 groups found 8 causes for each of these 8 top level issues.  We then had 64 possible reasons for resistance to change.  We prioritised  the subsidiary reasons and some of the highlights were:

  1. Ineffective communication
  2. People do not feel in control
  3. Distrust of management
  4. Wrong vocabulary used
  5. Fear of redundancy
  6. Fear of failure
  7. If it’s not broken why fix it?
  8. Internal focus – do not see bigger picture
  9. Fear they lack the skills
  10. Bad management

Groups then chose a forthcoming change in their organisations and did a force field analysis to see what forces promoted the change and what forces impeded the change.  They then generated ideas to reinforce the positive or mitigate the negatives.  It was agreed to be a highly effective way of articulating the issues and planning for the change.

The next meeting is on Feb 18th 2009 in London when we will discuss – ‘Innovating for Cash’.  It will be hosted by A D Little.

Paul Sloane

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Overcoming Resistance to Change – Next Meeting

Wednesday, October 8th, 2008

The next meeting of the BQF Innovation Unit will take place on the morning of Tuesday December 2nd in London.  It is kindly hosted by MITIE and will be at their offices at 1st Floor, Counting House, London. SE1 2QN (nearest Tube is London Bridge).  It starts at 9.15 and finishes at 12 noon.

Keith Philips, Director at MITIE, will give a presentation on Managing Change and I will lead an interactive workshop session on Overcoming Resistance to Change.  MITIE is a £1.4B turnover company that provides facilities, property and engineering services to some of the largest private and public companies.

The agenda topics are of key interest to executives in all enterprises, especially in these challenging times.  There is a small charge to cover costs.  Places are limited so please book early on the BQF Events page.  I look forward to seeing you there.

Paul Sloane

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