The way I approach resistance is influenced by the way I look at organizational change management. I see resistance as a crucial ingredient that is needed to make a change happen. Resistance fuels change. Without it, there is no change.

I get very suspicious whenever I see advertisements for consulting companies or training courses claiming they will help you to reduce or avoid resistance. They create the false expectation that organizational change is a mathematical exercise.

Emotions are the Only Way Out

They avoid to make sense of the emotional responses. Instead of seeing them for the fuel and energy they provide, they mistake them for a failure. Then, they move in the opposite direction, as if they were reading a road sign upside down.

Here is what that road sign says: resistance is emotion; and emotion is the ‘motion’ that is needed to move through the dip of change. Of course it is a bumpy road, but it is the only way through.

Lateral Thinking as an Example

One example to go forward is by looking at these reactions like Edward De Bono approaches creativity. De Bono discovered that logical, linear and critical thinking has limitations. It is primarily concerned with judging and seeking errors. He calls this black hat thinking. The problem is that it scares us so much that we want to move away from it. But the opposite it true.

De Bono’s approach is to appreciate the value of this negative thinking, instead of avoiding it. Next, he stimulates the other thinking hats to come to the surface. As a result of respecting the negative thinking and going through, one ends up with a rich palate fueling a solution for the situation at hand:

• Negative judgment (black hat) – logic applied to identifying flaws or barriers, seeking mismatch
• Neutrality (white hat) – considering purely what information is available, what are the facts?
• Feeling (red hat) – instinctive gut reaction or statements of emotional feeling (without justification)
• Positive Judgment (yellow hat) – logic applied to identifying benefits, seeking harmony
• Creative thinking (green hat) – provocation and investigation, seeing where a thought goes
• Process control (blue hat) – thinking about thinking

The bottom line is that we need to go through the roller-coaster of our own emotions in order to have the respect and authority to lead others through the organizational change.

The Math Versus The Path

The mathematical or linear approach assumes a straight line from the present state to the future state. This line is best described as ‘Analyze – Think – Change’.

Inevitably emotional side tips us and our beliefs into the cycle of change as described by Elisabeth Kübler Ross. Turns out that in times of change motivation is more important than math.

The nature of things is ‘See – Feel – Change’. The feel part, according to Kübler Ross is a rollercoaster taking us through the dip of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Trying to avoid those emotions is like cooking without heat: ingredients won’t fuse.

Forget the cheese and the mice, organizational change management just entered a new era: that of elephants and riders. The Heath brothers published a ground-breaking book on our core business.

And the expectations were high. First, because their previous book Made to Stick was a great hit for anyone involved in communication.

Second, because I judged ‘how are they going to pull that one off, without a proven track record of publishing in our field of expertise’? Let’s face it: they are not Kotter, Block, Schein, Weick or Blanchard. So I was a little skeptic.

Compelling Style

And they proved me wrong, by every turn of the page. As we could expect, this book is well engineered from a communications point of view. They use strong and compelling stories throughout the book and – like in their previous best seller – they use ‘clinics’ to illustrate the framework they are exposing. So that’s already an A from an educational and storytelling point of view.

What about the content?

So far so good. But what about the content? Before ordering the book I felt like one of the organizational change practitioner’s on LinkedIn paraphrased it: “this book seems like it’s not going to offer me anything better than the proven techniques put out there by experts in change management.” Some other colleagues stated “this book is not transformative“.

Come again? Not transformative? My colleagues refer to the fact that some of the examples cited in the book have been used before in other change literature. Unfortunately they fail to see that the authors present a framework that is clearer than ANY methodology or phase-model I have ever seen in this area.

The authors use the analogy of an elephant and its rider. The rider represents the rational and logical. The Elephant, on the other hand, represents our emotions, our gut response. They are two parts of the human mind and the premise of the book is that change management initiatives need to address both rider and elephant in order to change. The content of the complete book is based on this metaphor:

STEP ONE: DIRECT THE RIDER
- Find the Bright Spots
- Script the Critical Moves
- Point to the Destination

STEP TWO: MOTIVATE THE ELEPHANT
- Find the Feeling
- Shrink the Change
- Grow Your People

STEP THREE: SHAPE THE PATH
- Tweak the Environment
- Build Habits
- Rally the Herd

Elephants … Once you start seeing them

Below is an early note that I scribbled while I was reading the book. On this note I visualize that the rider is analytic and sees a logical straight line from the present state to the future state. This line is best described as ‘Analyze – Think – Change’. The elephant on the other hand – representing the emotional side – tips into the cycle of change as described by Elisabeth Kuebler Ross.

This is a natural process that all of us go through when we are confronted with any change. The point is that people – or rather their elephants – need time to make sense of the change.

Meanwhile, have a look at the rider anxiously holding on to that straight line. Turns out that in times of change motivation is more important than math.

Transformation: from mice to elephants

The real reason why this book is a gem is because the authors practice what they preach: they point out that you don’t have to be a CEO, a president or a prime minister to bring about effective change. If you look for solutions that are as complex and as big as the problem (which analysts often do) you will get paralyzed. Instead, Chip and Dan Heath advice to shrink the change and adopt the Flylady strategy, fighting chaos with five minute room rescues. (by the way, she defines CHAOS as: Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome)

Second, the authors point out that what often looks like a people problem turns out to be a situation problem. On multiple occasions they cite Wansink’s research on Mindless Eating. The point here is that Dinner control starts with plate control. And you often have more tools available than you think: small tweaks to the environment that yield big results.

Third, the Heath brothers take a positive approach and this may be the most groundbreaking point for our field of expertise. Until now our focus has been solely on resistance and how to reduce it. In other words: focusing on the problem and looking at what is withholding change. Instead the focus should be on the bright spots the authors say. Resistance is a symptom and not a cause! Stop looking at the mice. Focus on the elephant!

This book dramatically improves your diagnosis of so-called resistance and puts it in the framework of resilience. And when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change: from resistance busting to resilience building. And that is why I am convinced that it will transform our profession.

"All good things come in threes" – that is my way of saying that I can not cope with more things at the same time. So I tend to reduce reality to a maximum of three dimensions.

As a matter of fact, there are three insights about organizational change management that are somewhat related because I can see three distinct phases in each of them. Have a look at the drawing below:

First, Elisabeth Kübler Ross, in her research on death and dying distilled the five stages of grief. Ever since its publication in 1973 it has been commonly regarded as the "cycle of change".

Second, about 25 years earlier, Kurt Lewin published his thoughts on overcoming inertia and dismantling the existing mindsets in a model commonly referred to as the "unfreezing – changing – refreezing" model.

Third, Arthur Schopenhauer, who produced most of his writings even 100 years earlier than Lewin, made this remarkable statement about three stages of "truth".

I find some "truth" in all of them, but most of all I find the combination inspiring:

1. As ‘unfreezing’ actions and initiatives are being set up you are likely to receive responses that ridicule your initiatives. Most people react from a position of denial and anger.

2. In ‘changing’ times opposition takes all kinds of faces and you should prepare for a drop in performance and self esteem. People hit the bottom of desperation once they realize that the world as they know it will never return.

3. Finally, once the transition stage is accomplished and people start to accept the aspects of their new reality, most of the things they ridiculed in he first stage are regarded as self-evident. That’s when you know refreezing actions can start, anchoring the new reality.

In a 2008 article I stated that communication is not the message sent, but the message received.  I also wrote about the anatomy of a communication and why it should be tailored according to the information needs of the receiver. 

To summarize these articles, one could say that we’ve tackled two dimensions of communication: 
1. The FORMAT: there is an optimal anatomy for effective communication, it’s called Know-Feel- Do.
2. The QUANTITY: more information is not always better; one should underscore certain boundaries and then explore the topic within those boundaries.

Ok – fair enough – but how about the QUALITY of communication?

What should be the result of succesful communication?

At first you may think this is a rethoric question – one that needs no answer; a statement. We communicate in order to get our point across. Period. So that’s what we do – day in, day out, presenting, advertising, emailing, meeting, etc.  But when we measure the success of those communications at the receiver’s end, a strange pattern seems to unfold.

It seems that the quality of a communication is determined by the extent to which the receiver feels understood and involved, rather than by the amount or the quality of information. In other words: it is the relationship, rather than the content which determines the quality of a communication.

It’s hidden in the word: "Communication" requires "community" in order to work, so any exchange of information that does not result into being in relationship is actually non-communication. In that sense, good communication is more about receiving and acknowledging  than about sending. Stephen Covey warns that giving out advice before having empathetically understood a person and their situation will likely result in rejection of that advice. He makes this point pretty well in his 1989 book The Seven Habits Highly Effective People when he declares Habit 5" – Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood. 

What does this mean for organizational change practitioners?

In the course of organizational change programs it is even more important to ensure your message gets across. The messages you need to convey are not always the most desired or positive ones, and yet we need to ensure to take the shortest path to people’s hearts, minds and hands.

The below picture was drawn in a discussion on this topic. We take the Kuebler-Ross cycle of change as a given. This is a natural process that all of us go through when we are confronted with any change. The point is that people need time to make sense of the change pains. It’s a fact of life (or should I say ‘death’ instead?).

Of course we want to increase the speed of change.  People – and that includes you and me – will only do what they understand, and they will be even more likely to follow your advice when they feel understood.  This means we should be as creative as we possibly can in involving them and making them a co-sensemaker and a co-creator of the new reality you need to put in place.

Accelerating sense-making means shutting up, listening, acknowledging the communication so as to create a relationship with the receiver.

Over the past months I have been shaking up the realities of a team that is supposed to deliver IT services to my team. Deadlines are tight, stakes are high and communication gaps are deep.In God we trust and to Virginia I now pray.

Upfront I should be posting a big disclaimer on this article, stating that you are reading only one part of the story: mine. To my experience, the parties on either side of a communication gap tell stories that have very few elements in common.

So here’s my part: one of the big deliverables on the critical path of my project requires a custom-built web-application. From the beginning I have been putting quite some pressure implicitly (never explicitly: I’m slicker than most) suggesting that IT guys were incompetent if they were unable to commit to a timing, a budget and a delivery date. To me that seemed obvious, so I used every legitimate power at hand to make my point. As a result, 4 liaison persons have been appointed, some of the C-level hotshots are copied in emails and next week a web-programmer will start physically in our team, expatriated from the IT department. As I said, stakes are high, deadlines are tight … and I’m the bad guy. Juicy details all over the place, I can feel the spotlights burning on my skin. How fascinating!

As I am writing this I realize that I am on an important crossroad. I now have to suspect myself first and make a choice between being right or being in relationship. Arguing and justifying my past actions will not speed up results; neither will it close the gap that I am – at least partially – responsible for. Here are the facts: the deadline is not-negotiable, the programmer starts on Monday and all the rest is my interpretation.

One of my biggest flaws that I am aware of is my need to win at all cost in all situations – when it matters, when it doesn’t, and when it’s totally beside the point. So I pray to Virginia Satir to help me out here. Virginia Satir is a family therapist whose models and techniques are highly applicable in organizational settings. The wonder I am hoping for is that the insights of the Satir Change Model will keep me on the right track here. It is a model that highly resembles the classical Kübler-Ross model of change.

According to the Satir model, the resistance stage is triggered by a foreign element. Next, people get out of the dip by discovering a transforming idea that shows how the foreign element can benefit them. So here’s my next week’s challenge: 1. discover the foreign element (it could be me!); 2. Find out how this can become a transforming idea; 3. Stay in relationship and keep away from being right. Phew … Virginia, to thee I pray!!