Resisting Change

No matter whether a change is big or small, the change manager must know that people in the organization are going to find reasons to resist change. Because even the new value or belief is more successful than the previous one to meet the needs, if the previous one is believed successful by people than they will resist to change it.

This situation may occur in many cases. For example at a staff meeting everyone agrees to utilize a new procedure, but several weeks later it is discovered that the procedure has not been implemented yet. Sometimes job responsibilities of employees are changed. But some employees only change what they are doing enough to appear cooperative; in fact they are doing most things the way they were before the change.

Managers should plan strategies to deal with resistance. It is very helpful to understand why people resist change because understanding this allows managers to plan effective strategies to reduce the resistance against change.

One major reason why people resist change is the potential for loss on a personal level. There may even be a little threat but people may act as if there is one. Also the fear of failure influences employees in the period of change. If what they did in the past worked well for them, they may resist changing the behavior out of fear that they will not achieve as much in the future.

Some employees may see a change only from the perspective of the impact it has on them and their particular jobs. They may not recognize the positive impact of the change on the organization as a whole. Thus they may find the change totally unnecessary. If things have been going well for them, they fear that the change will not result in improvement. Focusing only on their part of the operation, they fail to realize that change is needed in order for the organization to stay competitive.

Employees sometimes feel they will