Learn from thousands of change management practitioners by following these five tips for managing resistance to change. These tips are taken from Prosci’s change management best practices research, conducted over the last two decades:
- Do change management right the first time
- Expect resistance to change
- Address resistance formally
- Identify the root causes of resistance
- Engage the “right” resistance managers
- Do Change Management Right the First Time
Much resistance to change can be avoided if effective change management is applied on the project from the very beginning. While resistance is the normal human reaction in times of change, good change management can mitigate much of this resistance. Change management is not just a tool for managing resistance when it occurs; it is most effective as a tool for activating and engaging employees in a change. Capturing and leveraging the passion and positive emotion surrounding a change can many times prevent resistance from occurring—this is the power of utilizing structured change management from the initiation of a project.
Participants in Prosci’s 2013 benchmarking study commented on the fraction of resistance they experienced from employees and managers that they felt could have been avoided with effective change management (see below). Participants cited that much of the resistance they encountered could have been avoided if they applied solid change management practices and principles. The moral here is: if you do change management right the first time, you can prevent much of the resistance from ever occurring.
Consider the following change management activities:
- Utilize a structured change management approach from the initiation of the project
- Engage senior leaders as active and visible sponsors of the change
- Recruit the support of management, including middle managers and frontline supervisors, as advocates of the change
- Communicate the need for change, the impact on employees and the benefits to the employee (answering “What’s in it for me?” or WIIFM)
Each of these tactics, all of which are part of a structured change management approach, directly address some of the main sources of resistance and can actually prevent resistance from happening if they happen early in the project lifecycle. Frontline employees will understand the “why” behind the change and see the commitment from leaders throughout the organization. In many cases, this will prevent resistance from occurring later in the project when it can adversely impact benefit realization, project schedules and budget.