I don’t believe in the tooth fairy, big foot, or resistance to change. I have no problem with the idea that sometimes people don’t want to make a change we think they should make, and therefore push back against it. The problem I have is the way the term “resistance to change” causes us to act toward the people who are doing the pushing back.
When we say that a person (or a group) is “resistant to change” we speak of resistance as if it were a characteristic of the person. We imply that something is wrong with them, akin to being “lazy” or “arrogant.” That leads us to think it is something we need to help them get over, perhaps by sending them to training or writing “agility” into the competencies they must display in order to be promoted. And if that doesn’t work, we feel free to write them off as just not worth our effort.
I have not met a person who is characteristically resistant to change. I have met many that push back against a specific change, but on other issues in their life and work they seek out change. Resistance to change is situation specific, not an attribute of an individual or group.
Organizations have somehow been drawn into thinking that resistance to change is a human characteristic. Perhaps, we have been oversold by the consulting industry that their help is vital to deal with the pervasive resistance we will surely face as our organizations change and evolve. I even frequently see articles that start with, “As is well known, people resist change.” But I’ve never seen research to support that claim, rather quite the opposite.
The research I see says human beings tend to seek out new experiences, that curiosity is the characteristic that got us to the moon and expanded our world through the World Wide Web. We are a specie that looks for the novel, the new, and the interesting. No, resistance to change is not a characteristic of human beings. But we do share the characteristic of pushing back against being required to make a change that takes from us something we value, that we perceive will cause us harm, or that just does not make sense to us. Perhaps “self-determination,” if not an innate characteristic, is a least a part of our national character.
There are two reasons I think the ubiquitous use of the term “resistance to change” is, not just inaccurate, but actually harmful.
First, the term lets us off the hook for the responsibility of attending to the concerns of those we are requiring to make a change. It prevents us from having to look too closely at the inconvenience and sometimes heartbreak felt by those we ask to change. It allows us to just write them off as “resistant” and feel ourselves justified.
Secondly, unless we are willing to look closely at what specific harm or stress those who must change experience, we can’t be helpful to them. The stock justifications we offer, “we must all tighten our belts” or “if we are to achieve our projected goals we must transform the way we deal with our customers,” do not address the issues of identity or values that trouble those who must change. If, for example, I am told that the way I have been doing my job, (a job that I know I’m good at and that has been the source of my success) is wrong, then with the change I may lose my sense of competence, perhaps my sense of identity. Those are not inconsequential losses however necessary the change may be to the organization.
We may be completely justified in the changes we impose upon others, but that does not justify insensitivity to the consequence for those who must change. And to deny the outcome of our actions by assigning the problem to the character of those who are impacted, is to employ a euphemism to easy our own discomfort.
The words we use to talk about people have a powerful influence on how we act toward them. It is easy to use a common phrase like “resistance to change” to reference a difficult situation we are facing, but insensitivity to our choice of words can have the unintended consequence of limiting the possibilities we are able to consider for dealing with the complexity of the situation. That is never more true than when we are dealing with change in organizations.
There is a clever limerick that always comes to mind when I think about the unintended consequence of the words we choose.
When the universe began,
God, they say, created man.
Conversely: dancing around the sod
Man, they say, created God
Watch your words or they may do
Something of the same to you.
