E53 - Decoding Change Resistance - Podcast with Daniel Lock

They may be showing signs of resistance or saying things that you don't agree with , that don't align up with your agenda , and then we label them resistors , and so what I'm saying is that's a bit of an illusion , because what would summarize a concept that would summarize my whole sort of thesis on resistance being a bit of an illusion is is that what causes

resistance for the most parties ? Ambiguity , and most of the ambiguity is own goals . This is often flicked in projects .

My guest today is Daniel Lok , a seasoned expert in the field of change management and communication , with over two decades of experience helping organizations tackle this challenging endeavor . Drawing from his extensive background , daniel shares his proven strategies and real world insight on how to navigate and ultimately conquer the hurdles of change resistance .

In this episode , we'll dive deep into the art of decoding change resistance , explore the intricacies behind it and , more importantly , discuss few actionable solutions every leader and change practitioner should know . I am grateful to have Daniel chatting with me today . Well , daniel , thank you so much for joining me in the Inner Game of Change podcast .

I'm grateful for your time today .

But before we dive deep into the topic , it will be fantastic , daniel , to share something about you , who you are and what you do .

We have two young children now and we wanted to live and work in Europe , and Germany specifically where my wife grew up , so our kids could get that culture as well as an opportunity for something different for us as adults , and look so far , so good . It's been a few months now and we're really enjoying it and it's working out .

The water's just gone back to school . So it's been really . It's been great . So that's the German connection . In terms of change management , I've been a specialist organizational change practitioner now for about 12 years .

Before that , I was in projects , project management and business analysis , process improvement world since around 2000 and , wow , about 2002 or so , so coming 20 or more years now and this whole sort of project and change and transformation field Around 2011 or 12 . Rather , I was working with some change managers and I was inspired . I thought I could do that .

I'm practically doing it anyway in the work that I was doing and I was looking for my next job as a project finished up and I put my hand up to move to change management and that worked out .

So I ended up moving into an adjacent field and specializing in change management , although I'd never really worked in it before and I just really found my heart in that work , really enjoyed it , thoroughly enjoyed it , and it's a growing field .

It's been a growing field since then and made a career out of it , extraordinarily , it's just when I look back on it like that it's quite surprising , but it's really worked out for me and I enjoyed it a lot .

You are driven by a purpose , which is the life good life for you and for your family and all of those things . So you've got your why nailed .

And for them there's a bit of a resistance because , especially with your immediate family , you're far away , they won't get to see the children and there's real drawbacks for them and the positive seems to be only associated with me and our family and how we benefit from it . So it was really important to have a clear , compelling rationale .

But ultimately it's an emotionally driven why and I think it's the same as true in business as it is in life is we were like well , now's the time , the children are the right age . Specifically , we really want to have the culture , the language and that European opportunity .

It would be a shame , given that they've got passports , not to do it , and so we just really had to help people understand that . I think if it was like are we going to move to the United States or to Singapore or Portugal for low tax purposes ?

That would be like really , really logical , right , you know , with parents and stuff , and I think that it wouldn't make sense . But when you put that to get the package together . There's a real need . We must go now because the kids are the right age , there's an emotional impact , there's an emotional payoff for it .

No , once I was able to explain that and enrol them in that idea . The defence has started to melt away somewhat , and the same is true in organisational change . You've got to have this . There's got to be a reason for why now , why in this manner , and it can't just be about the numbers . You know we need to cut the headcount .

I mean , that doesn't make sense . We've got to have a . It's got to be a rationale and even though people will have negative outcomes or they're not going to personally benefit so much from this change , at least in the first instance , because there's this emotion , the logic , the reason and the emotional and the why .

Now it all comes together in a nice package that people go , okay , I can get on with that , and then they're willing to listen to the next steps .

But I do remember when I wanted to leave home and travel and live in different countries , my mother was focused on why change the status quo ? And that's the essence of .

I mean , you can sit and do nothing and do it like everybody's doing , and you're probably going to end up with the same experience they get , or you choose the path that probably will challenge you and give you opportunities , and I've chosen the latter . So I completely relate to you . Today we're going to talk about change resistance .

So it sounds like you did not resist going overseas as part of your change . You've written recently an article where you shared your thoughts on LinkedIn around the illusion of resistance and change resistance , so that was going to be the base of our conversation today . First of all , I'm really curious why did you call it the illusion of change resistance

?

So there's a notion in behavioral psychology called the fundamental attribution error , which is we bestow behaviors on people as if it's fundamentally their personality . They are bad people . Or , in the case of change and change resistance , these people are resistors .

They may be showing signs of resistance or saying things that you don't agree with , that don't align up with your agenda , and then we label them resistors .

And so what I'm saying is that's a bit of an illusion , because what would summarize a concept that would summarize my whole sort of thesis on resistance being a bit of an illusion is is that what causes resistance for the most part is ambiguity , and most of the ambiguity is own goals .

It's often flipped it in projects , and the first place to look is ambiguity , unnecessary ambiguity that you are generating .

Now , of course , ambiguity and uncertainty is inherent in change , and what I'm saying is we just don't need to make it worse for ourselves than we have to , and so if we think about ambiguity , there's the place to look and in the particular article you're referring to ,

is a model of change . I've just been posting various models of change from the Kube , la Rost to Cota and so on , and sort of just breaking that down into the fundamentals , knowing that a lot of my readers are changed leaders . They're not changed practitioners , they are sponsors .

These are people who are general managers of businesses rolling out change , but they're not practitioners .

And so , just going through some of the fundamentals and some of the background , it's a useful conversation , and one in there I put there was the NOSTA model of change , which is a great model , and it basically has five or six components , and resistance and motivation is one of those components , but the other components are vision , the training , they are skills ,

resources and these are all sources of ambiguity that we introduce into a change and then we call it lack of , we call it lack of motivation or we call it resistance , whereas if we go , we can use that model , many of the other models , but this one's just the handy one that we picked up on is that you can use it as a bit of an audit , a bit of a

checklist . Well , we're observing what we think is resistance . Well , let's call what people are not on board or they're not coming along with the journey . It's nothing . That's , first of all , fundamental nutrition error . It's nothing that long with them per se it . Let's have a look at our process .

Where can we improve the way we're rolling out change to see better outcomes ?

And the first thing is , as change leaders have been sitting with this proposal , this change proposal , for at least months , if not a year or more , before anything is even communicated to the next level down , let alone employees and end users , and so their whole personal journey is so far , much farther ahead .

It's a little wonder that the first time you introduce this change , you get people , a whole person , backing up saying , hey , I don't know about this , I don't know , I'm not sure about this , what do we need to do this ? And it's frustrating for leaders who are busy and they are moving fast .

I've been sitting with this change personally for three , four , five , six months , four months , and now they start to roll it out and they're like I want to be moving . Why are these people losing ? They're not getting on board , like that's .

The first thing is we need to understand that people go through their own journey and you've just landed this on them , but you've been through your own personal journey for a long time and even that Nostromodel of change , one of the first things to have a look at is the vision .

And if you've got the vision there , that isn't clarified , then you're just creating confusion for people . And the first one is and I want to move to Germany , talk to my I'm just thinking of my parents . My first one is why ? Why would you do that ?

Now , my mother , of course , knows my wife is German , she knows that he keeps a German passport and occurs like why do this ? This makes no sense . Confusion is that first thing .

And if you haven't really nailed down that vision , why we're changing , why it's important , and allow time for that to sink in , have a conversation about it and roll people in it and allow them to move through it , you'll just get confusion and that's just that first sign of resistance , which is I don't want anything to do with this .

The project manager usually has got the three constraints time , budget and scope . Sometimes , unfortunately , also , we get introduced to the challenge ourselves as a practitioner's late in the piece as well .

So what's your experience with that , and what are some of the strategies that we can apply in there to still manage the timeline but also allow that simmering to happen early in the stage ?

I think getting in there and running engagement meetings when you know there's the lines at the door isn't , isn't appropriate , and people will look at you weirdly if you do it and I don't , I've never really seen anybody try to do that , but obviously that's not going to happen .

And so then we get the other end of the spectrum where , like , timelines are narrowing in and people are really unhappy , and then the change practice comes in and then we've got deadlines to hit .

Well , first of all , there's going to be some collateral damage there , and because it takes this work , takes time in the same way , but you can't get a project up and running and a project manager can't . If timeline is is fixed , then you know you're going to spend more money on it or you're going to have to lower your quality .

Right , but just , these are the realities of the situation . That it and in change you need time to engage people and bring them along and have them and flesh out the second order impacts that are going to happen from this order , from this change , through the range of stakeholders in the organization .

And so the ways if I , the way I manage I've been in both situations come in on projects where the change management part of it , you know , is blazing red and we got to get it back on track . And then the first thing to do is to catalog what's this ration ? is to effectively go through a bit of a checklist , you know , like why are we doing this ?

What's , why is , why is this important ? And then getting in there and understanding the impacts second order effects and it and having in the weeds , in the in a of change .

Getting in there with the stakeholders and really working through the impacts and implications on them with a huge degree of empathy and then understanding whether we need to make changes to the proposal or how we're going to . You know we're going to support these people through this sort of difficult time .

But you can't work miracles If there is an insufficient time and there's likely collateral damage and that can really hurt the reputation of a business , of an organization . This goes to the case for change , right , this can really hurt the reputation .

But from you know , hiring employees , great place to work , engagement , productivity productivity now and in the future can drop . The benefits of that change will not be realized as well . Like these are all the reasons why you know we talk to people about bringing a senior elderly so that we can maximize the benefits of change .

Otherwise , otherwise , really it's quite difficult . But yeah , I would say there's no silver bullet on this .

I think it's important for us to not educate but advise the leaders . I'm sure they understand , but advise the leaders that time is important and time is money .

Yes , we get that , but are you , would you be prepared to be spending a lot of time at the , you know , at the outside of things , or later when you try to fix problems , if the change is not implemented properly ? I want to ask you about any of your thoughts on this , because I've been thinking about this for a while .

Resistance can happen at any stage during the , the rollout of the change , but also the flavor of the resistance changes , so you can have resistance at the start of the whole . Why are we doing it All the way to the resistance of ? I don't want to do it face to face , as in training and all of that . I want to do it online and all of those things .

Is that , is that your experience ?

Yes , there's resistance all the way through and it's all appropriate because , you know , if you're getting a lot of pushback on training , perhaps you're looking to bring people in for face to face training . You know , perhaps you're implementing a

CRM system , talking to salespeople they're out in the field . They could be coming into the head office . Maybe you need to take a trip for a day or two of training . You know this is going to impact their , their own goals that they have for themselves , kpis .

It's time out of the field , it's time away from speaking to customers and they just hate it , hate it . Now . They're not necessarily opposed to the CRM system , but this approach of training is , you know , it's really causing them , causing them angst , and it's reasonable .

I think the thing we've got to work through what are the trade-offs Like , is there another way to do it ?

Like you just got to work through the alternatives or what you're trying to achieve with this and then start to come to a view you know and again enroll people in why this is the best approach , why we have to do it this way and how you can support them in achieving their goals . Well , the greater goals of the organization are being looked at .

This in and of itself goes a lot to there being too much change in an organization at any one time . There's sort of the complex , chaotic nature of organizations in the modern world is that usually you're not speaking to people in isolation of your particular project . There's been many projects failed or successful in the past , so there's that context .

There's many other initiatives outside of yours that are being pulled on them , there's HR considerations , there's other projects that they may be involved with or impacted either directly or indirectly by , and so there's this whole world of consideration that goes to this underlying sort of resistance , if you will . That's very much compounded in the current organization .

They might resist this strategy and how this is all linked together , like I had an experience a couple of years ago when they believed in the change and everything is fine , but they needed to do another piece before this particular change and that piece was not really in the financial budget and all of those things and all of a sudden we've got a problem in

there . So I guess my point is that as practitioners , we have to really understand where the resistance is coming from and try to mitigate it as much as we can within our scope and within our control , as much as we can .

But there will be things that will be outside of our control as well , things that we cannot see sometimes , and these things happen Also to your point around . For example , I mentioned the example of training . I do believe that we almost go through a cycle of change management for each stage of the project .

So you engage at the start about the design and all of those things . You engage at the UAT period . You engage at the training , because there's a vulnerability in the relationship , a psychological contract that we need to negotiate every day , on each stage of the project , all the way to the end .

So I've seen people and changes that happen really smoothly and then we allow two weeks for adoption and then we close it and so all of a sudden we have spoiled the whole experience that we spent so much time and effort on .

And so again , going back to that timeline but also as a practitioner , we're gonna have to think that we go every single day was almost like renegotiating that psychological contract with the stakeholders . What's your take on that ?

So let's take a hypothetical example of a middle manager nodding and saying yes , and then nothing happens , like nothing happens of the commitments that they're supposed to make for their particular area of demand .

And then it's not uncommon to find out that this particular change , and the way it's perceived for them in , either in reality or otherwise , is that it means that they're not gonna hit their bonus , or maybe their promotional aspirations are now jeopardized or very clearly not gonna happen because of this change , and they might be trying to protect their image in the

organization . So they're nodding and saying yes , but then that nothing actually happens . You really need to be sensitive to this type of stuff and this is the real organizational dynamics , or politics , if you will , that plays out in an organization . And talking to Peters , there's an article by Tom Peters that I encourage you to listen to , to look up .

It's about politics . So it's sort of Tom Peters politics and he says work is politics . And he's right .

Like this is the stuff that gets behind , that will trip up a change program because you don't have a line of sight as to these second order impacts negative or otherwise that people are dealing with , and so you need to look at the range of dynamics there .

To your second point , I totally agree with sort of the nested change cycles that you go through from the beginning of the project .

It's one thing to get people excited about the grand vision , but when it comes time to rub against the road , we need subject matter experts to come perform UAT , and you've got a daily operations to manage , and we've all seen this in technology implementations they give you the sort of worst people and so all of a sudden , how ?

What's the quality of your testing ? Because I don't really know what they're supposed to be testing for . So you've got a whole issue here to work through . What I have found in my role has been in change practitioners .

There's a lot of education that needs to happen for sponsors and general managers of businesses about the change program , and so you need the project manager as well as the change manager to educate the business . Okay , we're going into UAT . Do you really understand what's required and what's expected and what the norms are ?

And I'll tell you you would think that an organization that they should know this , but they don't all know that know this . I've worked in some very large organizations recently . We're rolling out significant technological change with significant risk and they just they really don't understand the process and you need to explain to them .

Okay , we're about to go into UAT . This is the purpose of UAT . I'd expect out of their user base , we'd expect about this , many people to come in and support UAT . Do you have a line of sight where or not you can support that in your business , Because you don't want to get there ?

Because , to your point about resistance and timeliness , they need advanced warning to be able to release that amount of people to support the project as well , and so you may not . It's not that so much that they're on , not on board with the project itself .

You know you come in and you ask people in a week's time I've got a business to operate and so you need to be cognizant of these kind of operational daily activities that are important to projects and organizations and the general managers that are managing those departments . And again , is this resistance coming from that middle management ? No , not necessarily .

It's just the vagaries of projects and the own goals that we have and then , if you can run a good process , you can actually eliminate or reduce a lot of this , this so-called resistance .

This is why I'm not a big believer that you can get a change manager to join a project at the start , when it's already started , and then in for three months and you get rid of them , because I just cannot believe that they actually can manage that without insight , without really understanding a lot of moving parts in there .

Otherwise you will turn into what we call a triaging person . You just do things and then tick the boxes and that's about it Absolutely no skin in the game and no interest in how this is going to impact the organization .

I want to ask you if we are not good at managing resistance or understanding it , identifying it and therefore thinking about ways to mitigate resistance , what will be the implication for a business unit or an organization ?

And the reason why change managers are assigned and brought into I've got projects is because there's people impacts and someone's recognized that how important it is , certainly in the Australian context .

In corporates now it's usually mandated that there's change management resources are allocated to projects and certainly the change management artifacts are required throughout the process .

Not that an artifact means good change management has been conducted at all , but certainly the implications of volume managing , resistance or change in general is the productivity impacts that you'll get a lot of people dropping tools , so to speak , gossiping to their colleagues , not actually doing work during the project .

This is during the build stages of a project and then as you implement , this could impact productivity in terms of the take up of the system , the policy , the change , the ways of working .

Now , if this can very directly impact the bottom line in terms of customers , productivity , of doing things , but also risk , and it can significantly enhance operational risk , I think that's probably the big one that goes unseen in organizations is operational risk .

Operational risk essentially and all that non-financial risk in an organization is everywhere , is just everywhere and very much invisible until it's a problem .

And then again , this is where good change management and good practice of engaging early and often and throughout and resolving that engage , those issues and impacts you see , can have a significant impact on business and I'd say in

the Australian context , and certainly operational risk and non-financial risk throughout the world is becoming increasingly important and certainly I think change management goes a long way to mitigating that and providing good structures to minimize operational risk that gets introduced with new ways of working .

If resistance is left unmanaged and we just have the attitude of well , it is what it is and we're just going to have to move on , it's got a direct impact on employee engagement and actually also psychological impact on people as well .

It can create anxiety , it can create stress and , if left unattended to or unmanaged or uncared for , it can create a lot of other complex problems for the organizations .

How do they meet together and how do they impact people ? And if you've got many impact going into one group or cohort , you're causing them real problems and real strife .

And this is a challenging problem both on the data collection point of view and it's a challenging problem from interpreting that information , and it's a challenging problem from just the dynamic nature of projects and things change pretty quickly from last month , quarter to quarter , and so you can have a view of the future that there is no conflicts and there is no

convergence of projects at a given time , but then very quickly that can change that picture and how do you handle that ? And so I think that's a really big you know that goes to the Agile organization , but that's a big area at the moment . I think that's having significant . Significant opportunity for organizations is change portfolio management .

Yeah , which helps manage any saturation and conflict that's right which , ultimately , which is a source of resistance .

One of the things that I've worked my advantage is that I've been articulate enough , brave enough to ask the organization literally where do you expect resistance to come from ? So sometimes we need to be overt of asking the question , because the organization's got a responsibility to provide us with this information . What's your take on that ?

But usually why , what , what , what , why would a person be resistant ? Well , usually you find out , you know there is significant impacts , yes , and it's gonna be a big , it's a problem for them and no wonder they're defensive and so it doesn't .

But I like the idea of a bitly asking and saying you know , where do you expect sources of resistance to come from ? But then you got to go and validate that because it's not always right absolutely wonderful , wonderful .

There's the , there's the outset . Everybody gets excited , but then it's about nesting that into each phase of the program as you as you move through it . Number two is in terms of resistance people . People tend not to resist what they are involved with .

So the degree to which , and particularly in complex , chaotic environments or with we've got some hydrography autonomy in terms of professionals so you know , thinking about I worked on a financial risk project was on most recent ones , and we're talking about seeing your people . I love executives or or strident , you know , professionals .

You really got to get them involved and I find one of the better ways to do that is to run large-scale workshops , getting 30 , 40 , 50 , even 60 people in a row over a day or two to work through issues and what people think to your meeting . That science how can you make it work ? Actually , you can make them work really well .

Very effective at mitigating resistance and getting issues out on the table and and proper solutions and Building empathy with the right Leadership , project leadership , listening to those particular issues firsthand super important , very effective .

And the third thing is labeling people as resistors is Unhelpful , ultimately , and even if they are being unreasonable , a better perspective to take is okay . Well , can I take responsibility and get and get ahead of things here by looking at our process ? Maybe we've missed something . Where else can we look ? What are , what are we missing here ?

Or do we just need to have a high degree of empathy for this person and and and look to uncover their second order or hidden Impacts on those groups and how can we support them through the process ?

So I really like that and I also like that we get a half to suspend our judgment when it comes to people's behavior and and try to be as empathetic as possible . I know sometimes really hard , but if we decide to play in the business of Managing change and helping people adopt a change , then we get after that , quality in our , in our behavior .

That's my belief . Anyway , daniel , I'm grateful for your time . I'm really enjoying this conversation . One last thing how do people get hold of you and contact you ?

So again , if you look , look up my name on LinkedIn , follow my work , send a connection request or send me a DM , happy to talk fantastic .

Daniel , I wish you luck and I wish you a happy Change for you and for your family in Germany , and I hope to get you back , perhaps in the new year and we can uncover those strategies that we can do at the as part of the readiness for big changes in the workplace , including the the three takeaways that you've mentioned .

But until next time , stay well and stay safe .

Your support means the world to me and by sharing this podcast with your colleagues , friends and fellow change practitioners , you can help me reach even more individuals and professionals who can benefit from these discussions . Remember , change is an enduring force and collectively we have the capacity to navigate it more effectively .

Stay motivated , keep expanding your knowledge and be the positive change contributor in your circles and work until next time . Thank you for being part of the inner game of change community .