Archive for the ‘Indifference’ Category

Good Lemonade

Saturday, February 16th, 2008

The subject of this post is borrowed from a book with the same title. The 1976 book Good Lemonade by Frank Asch and Marie Zimmerman tells the story of Hank who sells lemonade to his friends. Throughout the story we learn that the quality of his lemonade is not so terrific and – no matter how hard he tries to sell and repackage the product – the competing lemonade from his friend Howie sells better.

Hank is convinced that bad tasting lemonade can be salvaged. All he needs is a little advertising and promotion. The moral of the story is clear: no matter how good you package and sell your product – if the quality is no good – people will feel betrayed and turn you down. Likewise, if you have a good product it will stand out – regardless of the marketing campaign. Good lemonade seems to benefit from an invisible hand as customers become fans.

Good Lemonade

Regular readers already know that I gracefully pick up marketing logic in order to recycle the insights on the inside of an organization. If it works for a customer there is a fair chance that it also works for an employee – because neither of them is stupid. In the context of organizational change projects – be it a process re-engineering, an ERP implementation, a merger or a downsizing operation – you will be selling lemonade as well. Only in this case the lemonade is called ‘future state’.

Resistance to organizational change is the way lemonade buyers come to your market. If your lemonade is of good quality an invisible hand will be there to help you. However, if the opposite is true, no matter how hard you try, people will just see trough your phony slideshows, road shows, posters, advertising, newsletters, training and management speak.

It only takes one extra step to see where indifference comes from. In business bad lemonade is not bought and you go out of market, period. In organizational change we tend to ‘be right’ instead of ‘in relationship’ when the lemonade is bad so we push the initiative so hard that the resistance goes underground. Unlike customers, employees have no other choice than to buy your bad lemonade. That is where stinking indifference starts – sucking every last drop of energy out of your people.

The moral of this article: don’t abuse change management activities to repackage and advertise bad lemonade. If the lemonade is bad, be straight about it. Work on the lemonade instead of accusing the buyers. Use change management activities to bring about involvement and participation that triggers an invisible hand.

Posted in Adam Smith, Indifference, Marketing, Resistance | View Comments

More Evidence on the Good Nature of Resistance

Sunday, January 13th, 2008

This week I came across an article by Alain Vas, professor at the Louvain School of Management in La Libre Entreprise (i.e. the business section of a Belgian newspaper published in French). Professor Vas – like most professors – starts off by analyzing the origins of the word ‘resistance’.

Apparently the original Latin word ‘resistere’ signifies ‘to stop’ or ‘to oppose against’. When we look at what it means in physics, resistance refers to the force that opposes motion. On the other hand, the resistance of a material against an external influence, the resistance of a human body against a disease, and even the resistance in the Second World War are uses of the term that describe quality, health and guts; three terms that I would label as positive.

Then why is it that resistance in the context of an organizational change program is negative? As I have stated before, a common misunderstanding about resistance is that it is a phenomenon that gets in the way, something to avoid, something to prevent, etc. The belief that resistance is a bad thing is caused by the fact that the emotion is interpreted as negative and the energy is mostly directed against the change (at least: that is what we think!).

The truth is that resistance against an organizational change is an authentic reaction of people that communicates: "I CARE ABOUT THIS AND THEREFORE I REACT". In the above drawing I have demonstrated what I mean with ‘authentic’. The vertical axis describes the intention we have inside of us and horizontal axis describes the behavior that we demonstrate on the outside. Resistance – like commitment – is an energy source because the outside behavior is in sync with the intent inside of us. For a more detailed explanation of the drawing I would like to refer to the following related articles:

As for the meaning of resistance in the context of organizational change, let’s agree we give it the connotation that it deserves from now on, shall we?

Posted in Emotions, Indifference, Resistance | View Comments

Suspect Yourself First

Monday, November 12th, 2007

I just can’t get a hold of that thing called ‘resistance’. I have tried to define it over and over. And just as much as I have written about it – to that same extent I get hooked by energy draining conflicts, oppositions and being right.

Seems like there is quite a gap between theory, rhetoric, blogging and practice. So one more time I try to clarify my view on resistance; in the first place to get a hold of it myself. Let me know if it works for you too!

 

Some notes about the drawing:
1. Whenever you are confronted with resistance, you should realize that you are the one who perceived and labeled the behavior and the person(s) as resistant in the first place. Perception is everything!

2. On the right-hand side of the drawing, the point is to receive the communication. That way you allow the change process to start. You should know that there are lots of communications to receive before you get from resistance to commitment: anger, bargaining, depression and finally, acceptance.

3. A lot of ‘R’ words! On the left-hand side, Resistance can follow the Revenge path and thus create a game of being Right. On the right-hand side Resistance can follow the Respect route and thus create a game of being in Relationship.

4. I do make references to earlier posts on Indifference (Otis Redding Syndrome, Stockholm Syndrome, etc…)

5. The quote in the middle is taken from Stephen Covey.

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The Giant Misunderstanding about Resistance

Sunday, October 28th, 2007

Focus on Indifference – NOT Resistance!

Resistance is the emotion that occurs when our expectations of ‘the way things are’ are interrupted. Two words are important in this definition:
– Emotion: the essence of resistance is that it creates an emotion. That means: not logical, not rational and most of all: not predictable.
– Expectation: resistance does not only occur when things change, but when our expectations are interrupted, regardless of whether that makes rational sense.

Resistance is a Blessing

A common misunderstanding about resistance is that it is a phenomenon that gets in the way, something to avoid, something to prevent, etc. The belief that resistance is a bad thing is caused by the fact that the emotion is interpreted as negative and the energy is mostly directed against the change (at least: that is what we think!). What’s more, emotions are infectious. 
When an outside event produces negative emotions for an individual in a close relationship, it easily sneaks into the team, the department or even the whole organization. As a result, most of us will try to avoid that emotions get in the way. 
Unfortunately, whilst we are putting all our efforts in avoiding and fighting resistance, we don’t realize that we are hypnotized by our own panic and fear.

Let’s face it: resistance is emotion and emotion contains the energy you need in order to move from the current state to the future state. In organizational change you NEED resistance. The point is that you should not avoid the resistance or prevent this energy from being built up. Your challenge will be to channel and redirect the emotional energy in such a way that it helps you achieve the goals of your project. Nothing can ever be changed without the proper amount of energy. So resistance is not the problem but the means to achieve your goals.

Indifference is a Stinking Problem

As I posted before, indifference is the real problem. Indifference can mean two things:
1.) Either it means that the change is so flat that it is not causing any interruption in people’s expectations of ‘the way things are’. There are still plenty of ways for people to deny the message and the so-called ‘burning platform’ is not on fire.
2.) Either it means that you have pushed your new initiative so hard that the resistance went underground (resulting in the ‘Otis Redding Syndrome’ or the ‘Stockholm Syndrome’).

In both cases you’ve got trouble and a lot of work to do. First of all you will need to open a safe gateway to resistance, because if people do not feel safe to resist, they will never feel safe to commit (see red axis on the drawing).Indifference means: no gateway for emotion, no fuel; full stop. Nothing is worse than that. Therefore you need to be very explicit when communicating your change and respectful at the same time. In other words: pushing people out of their comfort zones and providing psychological safety at the same time. That will require you to manage your own emotions and your own expectations in order to keep out of the dead end street of indifference.

The REAL Reason why Reengineering Projects fail

Indifference may lead you to think that your implementation is a piece of cake. As a result, you can expect stinking problems as you handover the initiative to the ownership of the organization (your target stakeholder).
1.) In the case of flat change, people will at best commence the cycle of change: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally, acceptance. You will be urged to double or triple the hand-holding and coaching on-the-job period and your project budget will explode just to safeguard operations.
2.) In the case of duress, when the resistance went underground, the trouble will come as soon as the oppression disappears. This will result in establishing comprehensive control mechanisms, reducing trust to the bottom level. This in turn will undo the return on investment of any reengineering effort or redesign as the latter imply a delegation of control and power to the lower levels of the hierarchy in order to work.

Fear: Your New Friend

To give you an idea of how to redirect energy, the key lies in suspecting yourself in the first place. As a leader of a change initiative you should constantly ask yourself ‘What would I do if I was not afraid?’. Just like Hem and Haw in the famous tale of ‘Who Moved My Cheese’, you will discover that your relationship with fear determines your ability to create an explicit communication style and (at the same time) the psychological safety that is needed so badly in times of change. It is your own maturity, expressed by how well you deal with your own fear, which determines how well you will manage resistance.

In short: resistance is not the problem but the gateway to making the change happen. Indifference is the real problem.

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Three Ways to Disagree

Thursday, August 2nd, 2007

The below drawing started while I was making notes during a meeting last week. I observed three distinct behaviors resulting in three different outcomes.


To my surprise I witnessed that behavior 1 and 3 are authentic behaviors that give a clear direction to the team and a positive contribution to the meeting results overall.

Number 2 however, was mostly formulated in a polite manner, by intelligent people, but it always resulted in complex explanations on why someone else should be executing their brilliant idea. Could this be another form of Indifference?

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More Afterthoughts on Indifference

Monday, June 11th, 2007

This drawing refers to an earlier post titled ‘Cracking the Code of Indifference’.

Click on the drawing to enlarge it.

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Cracking the Code of Indifference…

Tuesday, May 29th, 2007

… and Coming to Better Grips with Resistance

For a few weeks now I am fascinated by a discussion on indifference on Tom Peters’ blog. It brought to my attention that there is more than ‘good old resistance’ to organizational change. The longer I thought about it the more I realized that the number one behavior you come across in the majority of the organizational change programs is indifference instead of blunt and open ‘in your face’ resistance. So is indifference just another form of resistance? I think not. The first is a coping behavior that foils change and the latter is an authentic reaction fueling change. In this article I will explain how this influences our approach towards organizational change.
The first distinction we need to make is the difference between the intention we have inside of us and the behavior that we demonstrate on the outside. They can be in sync or out of sync. Like the quote of Ashleigh Brilliant, "Fortunately in my work there’s always a choice: I can choose to do it willingly or unwillingly", there are four quadrants we can draw; two of which
are authentic and two that are coping behaviors:
  • Commitment: what happens when your intention is willing and your behavior follows your intentions. Let’s say this is an authentic ‘yes’;
  • Resistance: what happens when your intention is unwilling and when it is in resonance with your behavior. In his book on Flawless Consulting, Peter Block (*) lists some common types of resistance that are abundant during the lifecycle of an organizational change, they are: Need more detail, Giving a lot of detail, Not enough time, Impracticality, Confusion, Silence, Moralizing and Press for solutions. These behaviors demonstrate a ‘no’, but an authentic ‘no’.
  • The Stockholm Syndrome: The Stockholm Syndrome describes the behavior of hostages who become sympathetic to their hostage-takers. The name derives from a 1973 hostage incident in Stockholm, when several victims began to identify with their hostage-takers as a coping strategy. It is the same kind of fear of repercussions that we can find in some organizations. People lose their perspective as if they were in a hostage situation and start to act against their unwilling intent. From the outside they gladly execute, commit to the commandments that were made, so the behavior is a false ‘yes’.
  • The Otis Redding Syndrome: I borrow this one from Bob Sutton, who recalls the line from Otis Redding’s old song: Sitting By the Dock of the Bay, “Can’t do what ten people tell me to do, so I guess I’ll remain the same". Clearly, this describes people with a good intention who are somehow hindered to follow their intention. In this model I will call this a false ‘no’.

Fueling or Foiling?

By the very fact that I refer to the latter two as ’syndromes’ you can guess that they are kind of unhealthy in the context of an organization. Left aside the rhetoric of Bob Sutton on Jerks that hooks most of his readers in a pointless conversation on victims, persecutors and rescuers, what interests me most is how we can get the energy we need to drive an organizational change and,
overall, a healthy work environment.

Unfortunately, I did not come across commitment – in the narrow sense of this model – all too often in for-profit multinational environments. You will be most likely to find it in smaller enterprises and not-for profit initiatives and it drives people endlessly.

Second, I am coming to the insight that resistance is a rare behavior as well. I admire it even more than commitment because not only does it fuel people to be open about what they care about, it also goes against what is expected and generally accepted. It takes courage to figure out what is not important to you and to say no to it and vice versa.

The Otis Redding Syndrome is a depressing energy drain, regardless of whether you think people are victim to it or guilty of it. The point is that it is sustained by confusion (I tend to look at confusion as a behavior). Otis Redding’s solution was to “remain the same” because he couldn’t please 10 different people. According to Sutton, that is a rational response to a bad system.

As for the Stockholm Syndrome it suffices to quote Rita Mae Brown when she says ‘The reward for conformity was that everyone liked you except yourself’.

Both syndrome behaviors are dissonant with the intention on the inside; which demonstrates the definition of cognitive dissonance. The unhealthy part? A major cause of burn-out.

The Best Approach?

‘Mayday, mayday’: If I want to be consistent with this model in my organizational change advice, I will need to revise my approach on the syndromes with a 180° angle. Until now I have always argued that resistance is not the problem (and I stick to that part) but that real problem is indifference. I argued that nothing is worse than people who don’t care. However, as I learned from Bob Sutton, indifference has many virtues, as he believes that learning not to care and what not to care about is an essential survival skill.

As a result of this insight, here is my revised approach to resistance as well as both inauthentic ‘indifference’ syndromes:

  • Counter resistance with respect because it is an authentic expression that demonstrates that people care. Receive the communication and acknowledge receipt. Then, shut up and pay attention. This aligns with the advice of Peter Block, when he states that dealing with these behaviors primarily requires allowing, supporting, and acknowledging the complete expression of the resistance. In other words: shut up, listen and acknowledge receipt.
  • We should counter the ‘cognitive dissonant’ syndromes with respect as well – no games – because this is how people try to bridge the dissonance between their behavior and their intent under the given circumstances. Instead, what we should do as a change agent is to provide psychological safety, mostly through participation in the practicalities and the execution of the change.

Both approaches have in common that they improve the execution and the organizational alignment of your program without altering the initial strategic intent of it. And it’s really the simple things that make the difference here; you stay in charge of the why and the what, but you ask people to come up with the ‘how’, ‘when’, ‘where’ and ‘how often’.
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(*) Block, P.: Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your Expertise Used, University Associates 1981.

Posted in Bob Sutton, Indifference, Peter Block, Resistance, Tom Peters | View Comments