1) Pummel. Terror. “Do what I say or you will die.” The bad old days. This time-honored method seeks control at any cost and can be used to force either change or non-change. The worker is a slave.

2) Push. Distress. “Do what you must do or the enterprise will die.” This is conventional motivation, the deliberate use of fear to galvanize positive action – the burning platform from which people must jump (change) or perish. Push uses force, like Pummel, but it is not brutal force. It encourages people to act by loading them up with negative information. In the hands of some, this is the big lie. The worker is a rat in a Skinner Box.

3) Pull. Eustress. “Do what you must do to achieve the future you dream of.” Imagination, inspiration. It is less control than a willingness to lead coupled with a willingness to follow. Pull is Push plus empowerment – workers motivate (scare) themselves. The manager is a human being with no power to coerce; the worker is a human being with free will. A kind of fear is involved. Urgency might be a better word for it. This is the hardest way to achieve change, but the way with the best long-term results.

4) Pamper. Torpor. “Do what you feel like doing.” This is the realm of entitlement, the supposedly good new days. Pamper is Pull minus accountability. Zero fear, maximum empowerment, slack performance, scant measurement and evaluation. The worker is a child. The first two are related, characterized by fear, manipulation, and disrespect for the worker. The second two are also related, characterized by an acknowledgment of the worker’s humanity. The first and last categories are the extremes, but these extremes are common. Anyone who has been in many different organizations knows that a lot of them operate on these extremes of sadism and permissiveness. The best hope organizations have for making successful change lies in utilizing a balanced combination of the middle, more temperate two – Push and Pull. Push to get people’s attention and start them thinking. Pull to leverage people’s knowledge and creativity to put the change over.

Resistance to change is almost a fundamental fact of human nature.  We wish this were not true.  Resistance to the inevitable suggests there is something sort of stupid about us. But true it is.

The sequence goes like this:

1. Unplanned change creates anxiety …

2. Anxiety drags its feet in resistance …

3. Irresistible force collides with immovable object …

4. Team explodes in immense fireball.

It happens every time.  Well, not every time.  Few lottery winners decline to take possession of their winnings, to sidestep the changes that wealth brings.  But most change stimulates resistance.

Human beings are creatures of habit, each one surrounded by an individual comfort zone of behaviors and interactions.  Too much variation often means we must leave our comfort zone and face unknown consequences, which we then have to evaluate.

If we win the lottery, get a promotion, or find a new friend, most of us react positively.  It’s where we perceive negative consequences to change, or continued uncertainty, that we resist.

Resistance can come from a number of sources:

1. Fear – of failure; of loss (loss of identity, belonging, control, meaning, security, etc.);  of the unknown;  and of negative consequences, such as criticism for mistakes.

2. Laziness – not wanting to put in the effort to make the change happen.  These are the people who only see the short-term work required and become myopic to the big picture or future, long-term gains.

3. Previous momentum – too much time and effort expended in the “old ways.”  This is the opposite of laziness.  One is heading deliberately in a familiar direction, has picked up speed, is feeling OK – then is asked to apply the brakes and turn in a brand-new direction.  This takes a toll on renewed team commitment, not to mention brake lining.

4. History – dislike or distrust of the initiators of change.  This is where “getting even” sometimes takes place.  Either to settle an old score or just because you don’t like the person in charge, you resist – actively or passively.

5. Payoff – no perceived return for your change investment (what’s in it for me?).  Not only are humans creatures of habit, but we’re a bit selfish too.  If we do not see an advantage for ourselves in the change effort, we tend to wait out the change or not participate with enthusiasm.  It becomes the task of the leaders within an organization, then, to clarify the payoff for each individual team member, as appropriate.

1. Loss of jobs.  People lose their jobs when change fails to achieve hoped-for results.  In the case of many initiatives, lost jobs is the hoped-for result.  Job loss ripples through the organization, through the affected individual and his or her family, then into the community as a whole.

2. Loss of energy.  Every misstep along the change journey makes the next step more difficult.  The most successful change initiatives build in inevitable small successes early to forestall this power-sapping stage.  To lose momentum in most cases is to lose the battle.

3. Lost of trust.  If people were led to believe success was assured before, they will be less likely to believe anything later.

4. Loss of respect.  See if people look up to their leaders with the same appreciation after they’ve been led off a cliff.

5. Higher stress.  You thought things were bad before.  Pinning your hopes on a change that fails is like swimming to a life raft and finding out it leaks.

6. Fragmentation.  Whatever cohesion the team had managed to achieve may begin to come apart, as people drift back to solitary pursuits.

7. Depression.  There is nothing employed people enjoy less than contemplating unemployment.

8. Anger.  Where workers once reacted to initiatives by dragging their feet, now they may resort to outright sabotage.

9. Diminished risk-taking.  A good change initiative lights a flame of creativity under people.  If the change is snuffed, so is the light. Some workers are ruined for life – or certainly for as long as they stay with your organization.

10. Loss of credibility.  People become more skeptical about the employer’s claim that they are loyal to employees and that people are their most important resource.

11. Trouble at home.  Stress in people’s personal lives may have contributed to the failure of the change initiative in the first place.  Now the stress loops back and makes things even worse at home.

12. A change in management’s attitude.  The stakes are raised when the strike count goes to one and then two.  Loyalty to workers may decrease, as management goes into save-the-company mode.

13. Games.  When the ice is thin, people skate lightly.  Do not look for the same directness and disclosure you saw before the change failed.

14. Less to go around.  All that consulting, training, and reengineering costs big bucks.  While the consultants tiptoe away, careful not to let their coins jingle, workers face the prospect of diminished resources.

15. Craziness.  Flickering inside every man and woman is a lit bomb fuse.  Our fuses are all different lengths, but we all go off eventually.  Workplace violence claims the lives of around 1,400 Americans annually, at a cost to employers of around $42 billion.  Not exactly what you hoped for from TQM.

1. People do what they perceive is in their best interest, thinking as rationally as circumstances allow them to think. We call this the law of PUSH.

2. People are not inherently anti-change. Most will, in fact, embrace initiatives provided the change has positive meaning for them. This is the law of PULL.

3. People thrive under creative challenge, but wilt under negative stress.

4. People are different. No single “elegant solution” will address the entire breadth of these differences.

5. People believe what they see. Actions do speak louder than words, and a history of previous deception octuples present suspicion.

6. The way to make effective long-term change is to first visualize what you want to accomplish, and then inhabit this vision until it comes true.

7. Change is an act of imagination. Until the imagination is engaged, no important change can occur.

Organizations in the 1990s and 2000s are picking up and trying on new initiatives like a teenager in front of a mirror, uncertain of much, only sure that it does not want to be like its mom and dad.  The New Age must be better; it is, after all, new.  But you cannot discuss change in our time without addressing the enormous demographic and psychographic blip of our time, and why they (we) can’t help trying out every new thing that comes along – and are unable to make many of them stick.

Some of the factors behind the fads:

Globalization:  Where the older generation made and sold to a single American market, baby boomers make and sell to (and compete against) the whole world.

Technology:  Baby boomers possess much more intimate information processing technologies, and are thus prone to greater decentralization and individualization.

Speed:  Baby boomers are impatient because technology has given them that luxury. Previous planned changes, like the moon landing, took years; this generation does not feel it can wait that long. If an idea doesn’t take hold and yield quick results, they move on to another idea.

Education:  Business schools taught only one approach to business in the first half of the century; today there is zero “conventional wisdom,” even in the most hidebound academy.   Years ago there was no “management theory” section in bookstores; today there is an avalanche of offerings.

Experience:  People today travel more, read more, pursue continuing education, change jobs more frequently, encounter greater diversity, work across functional lines, and interact with people from other countries, cultures, and industries.

Diversity, cross-functionality, and “dress-down Fridays” all have their roots in the rebellious mod of the ’60s that railed against conformity, squares, button-down collars, and gray flannel suits.  “The leader as servant” idea owes more to the I Ching and Che Guevara than to Iwo Jima and Dale Carnegie.

Truth be told, though, conventional wisdom of the industrial age is no less wise in the age of change. Organizations are remarkably like machines, no matter how we “humanize” them. Bureaucracies remain efficient ways to organize complex systems. In-the-box is still the place where most of us dwell, and think, and are happiest. A wise generation would take pains, in tossing out the bathwater from the previous generation, to conduct routine baby checks.

Each type is perfectly capable of normal change. The center of the grid could be shaded in as “OK about change”.  At their extreme edges, however, like when a Controller is a very strong Controller, or an Analytical is a very strong Analytical – pronounced differences become apparent.

Controllers love to lead, and true to leading implies change, so it is logical that Controllers have a special knack for changing. Pure Controllers are metaphiles, cheerful embracers of the new and untested.

Promoters like to play. Their natural mode is exploration, and that is an intrinsically useful part of change.  Pure Promoters are metamaniacs, so enamored of change that they have to be changing in order to function.

Supporters are the people everyone else loves to have around. They are the perfect antidote in a marriage to a strong Controller – they smile, they shrug, they love, they forgive. Not exactly hard chargers. Thus, Supporters have a tendency to be metaphobes, people disinclined by nature to enjoy change much.

Analyticals are usually right, but they can be awfully tight about it. They are the perfectionists of the world, dotting every “i” and crossing every “t”. At the extreme, they become metamorons, people to whom change is completely unacceptable – because change ruins their data, their level thinking field.

What does it mean?  It means you don’t load a change initiative team with metamaniacs – there will be hamburger all over the highway. Neither do you assign a metamoron the task of leading a team in a pilot change project.

Most teams contain people from more than one group. This is not a bad thing. A team with a metaphile on it will likely galvanize everyone else to follow. A team with a metamaniac on it will benefit from the reassuring foot-dragging effect of a metaphobe.

As always, the beauty of teams is the diversity of their members. A team of all metamorons – all people with a strong Analytical bent, like a lot of functional teams in finance, engineering, and the other analytical arts – is going to have a hell of a time moving off the dime.

By the way, in my practice, I have learned that not many people enjoy being called metamorons. Just remember that only extreme, off-the-chart Analyticals qualify for this august title. Chances are, you’re much too balanced to deserve such an epithet.

1. Plan for the change.  We plan for change in order to have some measure of influence over it.  We want to have a say in where we’re going and what we are going to become.

2. Involve others in the change process – get stakeholder agreement and commitment.  People don’t usually resist positive change.  It’s the negative change – having to fend off a band of marauding baboons, or having to learn Chinese in a plummeting elevator – that puts us off our feed.  To reduce resistance, try moving the change out of the shadows of negativity and into the light of day.  Encourage team members to participate as partners in the change, and reward them when they do.  Resistance will drop and commitment should increase.

3. Communicate, communicate, communicate.  Because human beings are such creatures of habit, taking them in a new direction or even improving their lot by providing them with “better” processes or enhanced information tends to make them a bit skittish.  Surprises build anxiety.  It’s often not the content of change that people resist, as much as the process of providing it to them.  Use multiple channels of communication to answer and update individuals so they feel less a victim of, and more of an active participant in the change process.

4. Generate positive expectations.  People have an interesting internal process that tries to match up what we actually see in our environment with what we expected to see.  We pick out only those things that help us meet our expectations, and screen out the rest.  If you can create a positive expectation for change, or help folks see what any change will look like after it has taken place, they will feel safer and more secure when the change actually happens.

5. Create influence/support networks. You cannot create a successful change in a vacuum.  Whether formal or informal, networks create both checkpoints and anxiety relievers for any change.  Change usually causes one’s comfort zone to shrink. But you can minimize shrinkage by expanding the support network and encouraging frequent use of it.

6. Obtain adequate resources.  Ask for help obtaining the amount of human and capital resources necessary to create and sustain any positive change.  You may not get it, but you’ll have tried.  The research is very compelling on this point – many more actual requisitions are granted than non requisitions.  Another benefit of asking and being turned down is that you may learn why the request was not granted, which is good information to have for the next request.

7. Generate critical mass to create and maintain momentum.  Be aware of the number of people necessary to successfully carry off your change process.  Two out of ten won’t cut it.  You need a broad base – unanimous within the team, and a healthy number of advocates, champions, and friends on the outside.

8. Follow through and follow up.  The best-laid plans of mice and men can go down the tube in a hurry if you are not on top of any change process.  The process of follow-through and follow-up should be viewed not as a policing function, but a coaching one.

9. Persist, but be ready to pay the price – mistakes.  Change means risk.  Risk means mistakes.  Fear of punishment for mistakes encourages “CYA” and reduces the willingness to take the risks necessary to make change work.

10. Reinforce early and often.  Being creatures of habit, it is impossible for us to completely abandon the “old ways” for the “new way” overnight.  Change does move people and organizations toward desired outcomes – but slowly, in measurable steps.  The grease that keeps the change process going in a consistent direction is positive reinforcement.  A word of acknowledgement, a formal recognition, a pat on the back – all count as reinforcement.

11. Keep processes and techniques simple.  The fashion is to say that complex problems require complex solutions.  Maybe.  But solutions that throw a team into an uproar, that take people too far out of their comfort zones or are too technical, will result in great resistance.  Like eating an elephant, complex change must be accomplished one bit at a time.

12. Lead the way.  Finally, the importance of leadership to successful change work cannot be overemphasized.  Effective leadership is a must for effective organizational change.  Leaders provide the vision and the pathway toward positive outcomes.

For information about consulting and training that makes change work for your organization, contact Dr. Harvey Robbins.