Rico Poon

Organizational Resistance Factors

Change is constant, and organizations are continuously changing, evolving, restructuring, and streamlining their workplaces and processes. Change agents and managers are developing and implementing change management processes but are being halted by employees who resist the change. Resistance can take many forms, active or passive, localized or globalized, negative or creative, or transformational (Gill, 2008).

I told about my experience when I was working at Citibank from my previous posting, and they separated Commercial Banking and Small Business Banking into two business units. My marketing team was assigned to Commercial Banking, and we had a new manager in charge of the Commercial Banking Marketing department. Armenakis and Harris (2002) identified the five key change message components: discrepancy, efficacy, appropriateness, principal support, and personal valence apply to all transformation efforts toward change. Unfortunately, our new manager, the rising star in the organization, never gave us change messages that were motivated, positive, or negative. For example, in the first month when he onboard to the marketing department, he told us to find a mentor and learn from them so we can better help their marketing needs. This is his message; he never told us how to find a mentor nor whom to ask. Our new manager never managed a marketing department, and his management style has always told us the ended goal without telling us the beginning nor what steps to take to achieve the goal. As a result of the finding mentor initiative, we didn’t take it seriously, and we avoid bringing it up at our weekly progress report meeting. After a couple of months later, the mentoring project was abandoned.

Can You Recall a Time When You Felt Motivate and Involve in Organizational Change

Some of you from my intergroup conflict resolution course may remember that my career was freelance primarily. Therefore, I don’t experience much organizational change, let alone feel motivated or involved in organizational change. With that said, according to Edwards (201), here are five tips to engage and motivate during change:

• Set clear expectations and goals
• Focus less on getting people on board (i.e., getting them to be comfortable with the change) and more on getting them involved in the change (i.e., giving them a role). Be clear about how people can contribute to the change.
• Share information that helps people make decisions in line with the change, such as identifying the purpose, goals, expectations and what it means to them.
• Provide autonomy
• Change affects people and teams differently, but in general, people want to have control over their work environment.
• Empower managers and employees to incorporate change in the way that makes the most sense for them/their team. Give them permission to find their own solutions to implement the change.
• Actively listen
• Validate people’s feelings by acknowledging their pain, loss and/or anger over the change. People want to be heard, and acknowledging that you’re listening helps demonstrate their value to the organization.
• Create forums for open, honest, two-way communication. Listen to feedback and act on it.
• Establish short-term goals
• People like to feel as though they’re making progress toward the change, and they want to be recognized for their work.
• Create smaller, achievable milestones to increase the feeling of accomplishment and reduce change burnout.
• Establishing short-term goals also provides opportunities to evaluate progress and feedback, and identify misalignment earlier in the process.
• Celebrate success
• Acknowledge people’s contributions – both for progress in the organizational change initiative thus far and for what they have achieved in the past that helped get the company, initiative or project to where it is today.
• Celebrating success increases employee engagement and motivation by illustrating that the change is important and those who have helped implement it are valuable.

Recommendations

Communication is the cornerstone of any intervention, after all engagement and buy-in are based on good communication, so what happens when the communication is lacking, or the message is inconsistent? Armenakis, Harris and Mossholder (1993) explain that the opposite of change resistance is change readiness, and both are derived from the employees’ beliefs, attitudes, and intentions. So it is only through communicating these beliefs and intentions, and being truly heard, that employees can approach change with eagerness rather than apprehension. Smeltzer (1991) detailed the importance of good, clear and timely communication in approaching change initiatives.

With that said, according to Alsher (2017), here are seven best practices for communicating during change:

• Communication Must be Regular and Frequent

At the beginning of any initiative it is imperative to set the expectation that there will be regular communication that is credible and comprehensive. Often there is a tendency for people to wait to send any type of communication until all of the information is known and available. This is a mistake! It’s much more important to cycle your communication and repeat the same message often than to wait until all the information is complete and perfect. What if you don’t know something? Tell them! You can always say, “We don’t have all the information yet, but this is what we do know.”

• Do Not Over-Rely on Email

We cannot stress this point enough. Generally speaking, the average business person gets more than 50 emails a day. So, why then, does anyone think an email is going to have enough of an impact to change someone’s behavior? We are pretty sure that no one will change what they are currently doing solely because an email has gone out saying they should.

• Use a Variety of Communication Means

Even in today’s technologically-driven world, face-to-face discussion remains the most powerful method for communication. To that end, it is imperative to find as many ways as possible to meet either in small groups or in one-on-one sessions with the Targets of the change. Some examples of ways to communicate face-to-face include:

- Small Group Sessions

- One-on-One Meetings

- Focus Groups

- Team Meetings

- Hot Lines

- Video Conferences

4)   Don’t Use a Top Down, One Size Fits All Communication

One of the biggest problems in communication is actually one of the easiest to solve. Communication is often “top down”, meaning it is written from the point of view of the senior manager writing the communication rather than the point of view of the recipients. The over-riding rationale is that once everyone reads the message, they will understand why the change is happening, they will be on-board and resistance will be non-existent. We have four words for this… Not. Going. To. Happen.

• Instead, Use “Target Specific” Communication

Each Target group needs to be considered differently. What is, and what is not changing for that group? What kind of language and examples will resonate for that group? What's the "Frame of Reference" for those Targets? All communication must address the two most important questions from a Target’s point of view: “What’s in it for me?” and “What does it mean to me?” And needless to say, different Target groups will have different answers to those questions!

• Communication Must Include a Feedback Loop

Every communication that goes out must have a way for information and feedback to come back in. In other words, communications must be "cyclical" and "iterative." Feedback loops are crucial in order to allow Targets to express their thoughts and feelings. And, it’s a perfect way for Change Agents to gather information about any potential sources of resistance to the change.

• Monitor and Evaluate Your Communications for Effectiveness

Evaluate your communications to ensure they are achieving your goals. Test the effectiveness of your communications for both content and process.

References

Alsher, P. (2017). 7 Best Practices for Communicating During Change. Retrieved from https://www.imaworldwide.com/blog/7-best-practices-for-communicating-during-change

Armenakis, A. A., & Harris, S. G. (2002). Crafting a change message to create transformational readiness. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 15(2), 169–183. doi:10.1108/09534810210423080

Armenakis, A. A., Harris, S. G., & Mossholder, K. W. (1993). Creating readiness for organizational change. Human Relations, 46, 681-703.

Edwards, S. (2015). Five Tips to Engage and Motivate During Change. Retrieved from https://standingpartnership.com/five-tips-to-engage-and-motivate-during-change/

Gill, S. (2008). Power and resistance in the new world order: fully revised and updated. Springer.

Smeltzer, L. R. (1991). An analysis of strategies for announcing organization-wide change. Group & Organization Studies, 16(1), 5-24.