Overcoming the natural resistance to change
People are at the heart of every business, whether large or small, and they are the key stakeholders driving its success.
As businesses develop, they naturally need to change to stay relevant and valued in the marketplace and be ‘fit for the future’ in an ever-changing world.
Yet many organisations struggle to successfully implement change programmes and often face issues or problems that can often cost the business more money and time than it should.
The primary cause of this is resistance from their people. This can be broken down into three fundamental reasons why change initiatives can fail in a business.
Typically, it is because their employees either:
- don’t understand why the change has been made
- don’t like the change that has been made, or
- don’t trust the reason for the change itself
These reasons sound very logical on the face of it, but they are all rooted in emotions and are often an instinctive reaction to any uncertainty that change can naturally bring.
Positively managing change
Fortunately, there are different ways that organisations can overcome the natural resistance to change and take effective steps to mitigate any problems.
These simple approaches can help to get people bought into the change journey:
- increasing communication to employees (the why and the how)
- utilising different communications channels and encouraging two-way communication
- building trust with employees
- engaging and collaborating effectively
It’s very much about understanding the landscape and putting appropriate plans and measures in place to ensure that everything is fit for purpose.
Increasing engagement and collaboration will significantly increase the chances of being able to change the organisation, but businesses need to fully understand the roots of the resistance before they overcome it.
That’s where One44’s experience and skills can help.
Specialist training and consultancy
We are people-orientated, and we shape solutions very much through a people-lens.
After an initial no obligation chat, we can provide a range of consultancy or training services to support you in managing the change process in a holistic way.
We understand that each organisation is unique and approach the challenge of resistance from a ‘how do we make sure people are engaged’ point of view, so that there is minimal change fatigue.
It’s vital to look at what things are important to people and consider how you want your employees to feel? What do you want people to get out of it?
Performance can be impacted, so organisations need to consider how to help employees as best as possible, as you navigate them through the change programme to create the best experience for your people and minimise disruption to the business.
We can help to create environments to empower teams by encouraging innovative thinking and new or different ways of working as they go through the process and come out of the other side ready to face their challenges as a stronger organisation.
