New look at resistance:
Another attitude that gets staff people into trouble is the expectation that all the people involved will resist the change. Its curious but true that the staff person who goes into a job with the conviction that people are going to resist any new idea with blind stubbornness is likely to find them responding just the way the staff specialist thinks they will. The process is clear: whenever the people who are supposed to buy new ideas are treated as if they were bullheaded, the way they are used to being treated changes; and they will be bullheaded in resisting that change!
I think that staff people—and management in general—will do better to look at it this way: When resistance does appear, it should not be thought of as something to be overcome. Instead, it can best be thought of as a useful red flag—a signal that something is going wrong. To use a rough analogy, signs of resistance in a social organization are useful in the same way that pain is useful to the body as a signal that some bodily functions are getting out of adjustment.
The resistance, like the pain, does not tell what is wrong but only that something is wrong. And it makes no more sense to try to overcome such resistance than it does to take a pain killer without diagnosing the bodily ailment. Therefore, when resistance appears, it is time to listen carefully to find out what the trouble is. What is needed is not a long harangue on the logics of the new recommendations but a careful exploration of the difficulty.
It may happen that the problem is some technical imperfection in the change that can be readily corrected. More than likely, it will turn out that the change is threatening and upsetting some of the established social arrangements for doing work. Whether the trouble is easy or difficult to correct, management will at least know what it is dealing with.
New job definition:
Finally, some staff specialists get themselves in trouble because they assume they have the answer in the thought that people will accept a change when they have participated in making it. For example:
- In one plant we visited, an engineer confided to us (obviously because we, as researchers on human relations, were interested in psychological gimmicks!) that she was going to put across a proposed production layout change of hers by inserting in it a rather obvious error, which others could then suggest should be corrected. We attended the meeting where this stunt was performed, and superficially it worked. Somebody caught the error, proposed that it be corrected, and our engineer immediately “bought” the suggestion as a very worthwhile one and made the change. The group then seemed to “buy” his entire layout proposal.
It looked like an effective technique—oh, so easy—until later, when we became better acquainted with the people in the plant. Then we found out that many of the engineer’s colleagues considered her a phony and did not trust her. The resistance they put up to her ideas was very subtle, yet even more real and difficult for management to deal with.
Participation will never work so long as it is treated as a device to get other people to do what you want them to. Real participation is based on respect. And respect is not acquired by just trying; it is acquired when the staff people face the reality that they need the contributions of the operating people.
If staff people define their jobs as not just generating ideas but also getting those ideas into practical operation, they will recognize their real dependence on the contributions of the operating people. They will ask the operators for ideas and suggestions, not in a backhanded way to get compliance, but in a straightforward way to get some good ideas and avoid some unnecessary mistakes. By this process staff people will be treating the operating people in such a way that their behavior will not be perceived as a threat to customary work relationships. It will be possible to discuss, and accept or reject, the ideas on their own merit.
The staff specialist who looks at the process of introducing change and at resistance to change in the manner outlined in the preceding pages may not be hailed as a genius, but can be counted on in installing a steady flow of technical changes that will cut costs and improve quality without upsetting the organization.
Role of the administrator
Now what about the way top executives go about their own jobs as they involve the introduction of change and problems of resistance?
One of the most important things an executive can do, of course, is to deal with staff people in much the same way that the staff members should deal with the operators. An executive must realize that staff people resist social change, too. (This means, among other things, that particular rules should not be prescribed to staff on the basis of this article!)
But most important, I think, is the way the administrators conceive of their job in coordinating the work of the different staff and line groups involved in a change. Does an administrator think of these duties primarily as checking up, delegating and following through, applying pressure when performance fails to measure up? Or does the executive think of them primarily as facilitating communication and understanding between people with different points of view—for example, between a staff engineering group and a production group who do not see eye to eye on a change they are both involved in? An analysis of management’s actual experience—or, at least, that part of it which has been covered by our research—points to the latter as the more effective concept of administration.
I do not mean that executives should spend their time with the different people concerned discussing the human problems of change as such. They should discuss schedules, technical details, work assignments, and so forth. But they should also be watching closely for the messages that are passing back and forth as people discuss these topics. Executives will find that people—themselves as well as others—are always implicitly asking and making answers to questions like: “How will she accept criticism?” “How much can I afford to tell him?” “Does she really get my point?” “Is he playing games?” The answers to such questions determine the degree of candor and the amount of understanding between the people involved.
When administrators concern themselves with these problems and act to facilitate understanding, there will be less logrolling and more sense of common purpose, fewer words and better understanding, less anxiety and more acceptance of criticism, less griping and more attention to specific problems—in short, better performance in putting new ideas for technological change into effect.