Change Management 101 - Blame the Employees

It is common to blame employees, middle managers, or anyone else who has little power when a change fails. I call it Change Management 101 -- it's that common. The lesson of the hugely popular book, Who Moved My Cheese, was that those pesky mice needed to get with the program and change - or die. The book said nothing about the impact of the leader's behavior on how the change was being planned and implemented, nor did it allow that the change might actually be a bad idea.

The way people lead change has a significant impact on whether others will support or resist a new idea. Blaming the stuckees (to coin a term) misses the mark. We should focus on what the leaders do - and what they fail to do. Quite often, they lead change by fiat and minimal involvement. Their idea of involvement is a 2-hour mind-numbing PowerPoint presentation with 10 minutes of Q&A.

I found that people resist change for three reasons. In simplest terms: they don't get it. . . they don't like it. . .and/or they don't like you. Any of those can stop a change dead in its tracks. Most change strategies focus on making sure people get it - that they understand what's going to happen. These strategies are fine but they don't go far enough. They miss the emotional component -- does this change excite or terrify people? And they fail to acknowledge the impact of trust (or the lack of trust) can have on their ability to influence others. When trust is low, people tune out or look for reasons why this change is another example of bad leadership. When trust is high, people tend to give the leaders the benefit of the doubt and actually find ways to make the change a success.

I find it ironic that most leaders seem to know what to do. In workshops, I'll play a really bad leader as he introduces change. Not surprisingly, participants have no trouble identifying all the things that this character is doing wrong. However, what did surprise me was that they could also identify what my character could have done correctly. In fact, these leaders are so astute that their strategies address the I don't get it, the I don't like it, and the I don't like you issues before they become problems. In other words, they avoided resistance by building support first.

However, something happens once people (including you and me) get on the job. Pressure mounts. Deadlines loom. And we seem to give in to our own worst instincts. Too bad, since most of us know what to do. If we would only slow down enough to take a breath and ask ourselves, "What should I do in this situation?," we would probably identify actions that would move the change forward, instead of doing things that created resistance.

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