Posted on October 5, 2021October 4, 2021 by Mike Clayton

Resistance to Change

Pocketblog has gone back to basics. This is part of an extended management course.

In the last couple of blogs, we have taken a look at how organisational change works in three phases, and how people respond to change. In this blog, we’ll focus on the ways in which people resist change and how you, as a manager, can deal with resistance.

Resistance is an inevitable part of people’s response to change and there are many reasons why people resist change. Dealing respectfully with that resistance requires that you can interpret the nature and reasons for the resistance, so the first skill to deploy will always be listening.

What you are listening for, will be clues as to what the source of the resistance is, so that you can address it properly. There are five levels of resistance, that lead to a simple, powerful model developed by Dr Mike Clayton (coincidentally, the author of this blog).

The Onion Model of Resistance

The Onion Model suggests five levels of resistance – each a little hotter and more emotionally charged than the last.

I don’t understand why we have to change

Resistance is often prompted by not recognising the need to change. People in organisations are usually only aware of pressures that impact upon them directly – leading them to say ‘we really must change this.’ But other pressures for change pass them by and it is therefore natural for them to question what they see as unnecessary change.

Address this form of resistance by showing why change is necessary

I don’t understand why this change

Even when people see the need for change, they also need to understand why you have chosen the response you have. You – or another manager – have gone through a series of investigations and decisions to choose your response but others have been outside of that process and naturally wonder if there is a better way.

Address this form of resistance by showing why your response is the most appropriate one.

I don’t like this change

At times of change, people often focus on what they will lose, giving it more weight than the corresponding gains. This hard-wired ‘loss aversion’ is a powerful driver of resistance even when objectively, the loss is small and the benefit is great. People will also resist when objectively the loss to them outweighs the benefit, but here, there is nothing you can do aside from acknowledging, sympathising, and supporting your colleague.

Address perceived disadvantage by patiently demonstrating the benefit.

Another reason for this form of resistance is that people sometimes spot a flaw in your plan. They may be wrong or right, but you must listen and evaluate carefully, and be prepared to make changes if you conclude that your changes are not the best you can make them.

I don’t like change

Change is a part of life that we all live with, but some have a greater tolerance than others. Those who feel they don’t like change are again focusing on what they fear losing, or simply on the fear that they will not be able to cope.

Address this form of resistance by offering support to help people overcome their fears and thrive in the new environment.

I don’t like you

This is rarely as personal as it sounds. In times of change, people lash out at whoever they can, as a way of exercising old frustrations and grievances, because the stresses of change add to the pressures they are under.

Accept a small amount of this only and address this as the inappropriate behaviour that it is. Use assertive behaviour and your other skills for dealing with difficult behaviour to deal with it in the first instance. If, on occasion, this is not enough, use your organisation’s formal procedures.

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Posted on September 21, 2021September 20, 2021 by Mike Clayton

Lewin, Bridges and the Phases of Change

Pocketblog has gone back to basics. This is part of an extended management course.

Change is a never-ending part of organisational life, and managing it effectively is one of the principal challenges for managers. So you need to understand the process, so that you can support effective change in the people who make up your organisation.

This was a topic addressed by one of the twentieth century’s leading thinkers in workplace psychology (and a regular feature of the Management Pocketblog – see below); Kurt Lewin. Among his many contributions to our understanding of organisational life is a three-part model of change.

Forces for Change

Lewin regarded us as subject to a range of forces within our environment, which he divided into:

Driving Forces, which promote change, and
Restraining Forces, which hinder it, consisting of our inner resistance to change and our desire to conform to what we perceive to be the established social norms.

Three Phases of Change

1. Unfreezing

Lewin identified the first phase of change as unfreezing established patterns of behaviour and group structures. We do this by challenging existing attitudes, beliefs and values, and then offering alternatives. This allows people to start to relax from their restraining forces; preparing them for change.

2. Changing

The second phase is changing, in which we lead people through the transition to a new state. This is a time of uncertainty and confusion, as people struggle to build a clear understanding of the new thinking and practices that will replace the old. The range of different responses you will encounter means that good leadership is essential. Without it, people will follow whatever weak leadership they can find. A great danger is people’s susceptibility to gossip and rumour during times of change.

3. Freezing

Eventually, a new understanding emerges. Lewin’s third phase is freezing (sometimes refreezing) these new ways of being into place, to establish a new prevailing mind-set. During this phase, people adapt to the changed reality and look for ways to capitalise on the new opportunities it offers. Alternatively, they might instead make a decision to opt-out from the change and move on.

Subsequent Interpretations

When Lewin described this model, he was clear that the phases represent parts of a continuous journey; not discrete processes. However, not everyone understood this – or even took the time to read Lewin’s own writing. The model became neglected largely because his use of the term ‘phases’ led to false interpretations that he was referring to static stages.

However, we might equally argue that his thinking is in rude health. In his excellent 1980 book, ‘Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change’, William Bridges put forward a similar three stage model of changes, or transitions:

Letting go
Neutral zone
New beginning

Bridges’ books are best sellers that give readers much practical advice on how to support people through each of the three stages of their transition.

Whether in the original form proposed by Lewin, or in the more modern form presented by Bridges, the three phases model is immensely valuable. It focuses us on how to move people through change. As both the first systematic work on organisational change and as a starting point for designing a change process, an understanding of this model is vital for any manager who is working in the arena of change.

Next week, we will look at a complementary model of how people respond to imposed change, developed by Cynthia Scott and Dennis Jaffe.

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Posted on February 23, 2016March 19, 2018 by Mike Clayton

Robert Owen: Fair Management

Robert Owen is often referred to as a social reformer. So what is he doing in a blog about management?

In fact, in his espousal of management over pure command and control, we can see in Owen the first shining of the light of humanistic management, that was not to become the norm in his home country of the UK for nearly two centuries.

Short Biography

Robert Owen was born in 1771, in Newtown, in Wales. After working in several drapery businesses around England, in 1790, he became the joint owner of a textile factory in Manchester. Because he had little experience of manufacturing, he started off wth a rigorous regime of intense observation of how his employees worked. Through this, he said, ‘I maintained order and regularity throughout the establishment’. Could this be an early variant on ‘Management by Walking About’: Management by Observation?

Along with other investors, Owen bought a Mill in New Lanark in 1799. The realities of what was then regarded as enlightened mill ownership were that he inherited a workforce where 5 and 6 year olds were expected to work up to 15 hours a day. His first act was to stop taking children from the local poorhouse, to raise the minimum age of children he employed to 10, and to ban the use of corporal punishment.

This was the start of a series of reforms that led to Owen being labelled variously as a social reformer, a socialist, an educational reformer, and a utopian (by Marx and Engels!) But at this time, certainly, Owen justified all of his changes on purely economic grounds. He used profits to fund social improvements for his workers and found that productivity subsequently increased. Eventually, the New Lanark Mill showed a 50% Return on Investment (ROI).

Eventually, his reforms were to include taking no children into the mill, creating the first night school in the world, for his workers, starting what became the basis of the British Co-operative movement, and founding the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union in 1834 – sadly, it did not survive the year. He also tried in 1815 and failed to introduce new legislation to improve working conditions nationally.

It may shock us now that his aim of increasing the minimum working age to 10, reducing the maximum daily working hours to 10½, and requiring a minimum of half an hour a day of education for all children was seen as a serious risk to the wellbeing of business. Lesser legislation was passed in 1819 and we still hear the same arguments about potential legislation around worker’s rights today.

Consult other sources…

If you want to learn more about his social reforms, educational work, or attempts to create trades unions and co-operatives, there is plenty of good material. I would like to focus on the things Owen did in management, that were almost a century ahead of his time, to only really be formalised by the likes of Mary Parker Follett and George Eastman, and the later humanistic management leaders, like Elton Mayo and Douglas McGregor.

Five Visionary Approaches

Humanistic Management
Owen recognised that, in his rapidly mechanising industry, machines would never attain a greater importance than the people who worked them

Abandoning Command and Control
Owen preferred to manage his workers, rather than issue commands. And to help him, he started selecting his managers on merit and giving them training.

Empowerment
Okay, so he would never have used this modern buzzword, but he firmly believed in the value of giving his managers real autonomy.

Change Management
Not only did Owen understand the value of winning trust from his workers before trying to impose change; he actively sought out influential individuals among them to help build and disseminate his case: what we call ‘change champions’.

Performance Monitoring
Every day, supervisors would assess the work of their workers, and award a colour code (from poor, black to blue to yellow to white – best), which would be displayed on a wooden block (his ‘silent monitor’) for all to see. Peer pressure and pride are powerful motivators!

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Posted on November 17, 2015March 19, 2018 by Mike Clayton

John Kotter: Leadership and Change

John Kotter was a star academic from an early age and is now regarded as one of the leading thinkers, researchers and consultants on organisational change. He is equally known for his earlier work on leadership. But for Kotter, the two cannot be separated:

“Leadership produces change.”

Kotter says. And change is the function of leadership.

Short biography

John Kotter was born in 1947, in San Diego, California. He moved to the east coast to gain his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from MIT (1968), his SM in management from MIT’s Sloan School of Management (1970), and a DBA from Harvard in organisational behaviour (1972).

Kotter stayed on at Harvard, becoming a tenured professor at 33, in 1980, having already published four books. It was his 1982 book, The General Managers, and the accompanying Harvard Business Review article, that started to make his name outside of academic circles. This set out the need for a general manager to master both the competencies needed to run their business and the relationship-building skills needed to extend effective networks throughout the wider organisation.

In a series of books, Kotter established himself as adept at distilling direct observation of what happens inside an organisation, into general principles that others can learn from. Key books include:

The Leadership Factor (1987)
A Force for Change: How Leadership Differs from Management (1990)
Corporate Culture and Performance (1992)
Leading Change (1996)
Heart of Change: Real-Life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations (2002)
Our Iceberg is Melting (2006)
Buy-In: Saving Your Good Idea from Getting Shot Down (2010)
Accelerate (2014)

In 2001, Kotter retired from his full time faculty role and became professor emeritus, retaining Harvard Business School’s Konosuke Matsushita Chair of Leadership, which he has held since 1990. in 1997, he published a biography of the Japanese entrepreneur who endowed the chair: ‘Matsushita: Lessons from the 20th Century’s Most Remarkable Entrepreneur‘.

Kotter’s current activity focuses around Kotter International, the consultancy he co-founded in 2008. He is reputedly one of the most in-demand and highest paid speakers on the US corporate speaking circuit, with fees allegedly starting at $75,000. You can hear a flavour of him as a speaker on his YouTube Channel.

Leadership and Management

Kotter’s observations led him to concur with Warren Bennis that there are differences between management and leadership. While managers’ roles include organising, controlling, planning and budgeting, Kotter argued, in A Force for Change, that there are three principal roles for a business leader:

Setting direction for the future of their business
Aligning their people to that direction
Motivating and inspiring people to move in that direction

For Kotter, then, leadership is all about change. More than most of his contemporary leadership commentators, Kotter veers towards the ‘leaders are born’ end of the scale, arguing that the best exhibit traits that go beyond what they can learn: energy, intellect, drive and integrity. But he does acknowledge that experiences shape leadership, noting that diverse and tangential career opportunities help shape leaders beyond the narrow confines of management.

Leading Change

Kotter’s transformative book (and the most reprinted ever Harvard Business Review article that accompanied it: Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail) was ‘Leading Change‘. This set out to show that managing change is not enough; change needs to be led. The book is widely regarded as a classic in the business/management field and was one of Time Magazine’s 25 most influential business management titles (along with books by many of the Management Thinkers covered in this blog series).

in the article and book, Kotter sets out an 8 step process for leading change, and argues that companies fail to deliver successful transformation when they do not pursue all of the steps, in the sequence, with sufficient attention. These steps embody much earlier thinking – in them, we can see the shadow of Kurt Lewin’s Freeze Phases, for example. What makes them particularly valuable is the clarity with which Kotter sets out the tasks leaders face, and the illustrative examples he gives.

In 2002, he co-authored Heart of Change with Deloitte Consulting’s Dan Cohen, in which they focus on case studies to illustrate this further. I have a strong memory of Cohen presenting at a US conference I attended towards the end of my time with Deloitte. The clarity of this approach rang out for me.

To further clarify, Kotter then co-authored Our Iceberg is Melting with Holger Rathgeber. This book turned the whole 8-step process into an allegorical tale of a penguin who becomes aware of global warming and needs to influence change among his compatriots. Would that more climate campaigners could learn some of these lessons. I guess this book was targeted at the market that made Spencer Johnson’s ‘Who Moved my Cheese?‘ (another Time top 25 book) such a huge success. Whilst Cheese focuses on the personal effects of change, Iceberg teaches how to lead change.

The Eight Steps

Establish a sense of urgency
Create a guiding coalition
Develop a vision and strategy
Communicate the change vision
Empower employees for broad-based action
Generate short-term wins
Consolidate gains and produce more change
Anchor new approaches in the culture

Accelerate

2010’s book ‘Buy-In‘ set out to help leaders make their case, but it was Kotter’s latest, 2014 book, ‘Accelerate‘ that has moved his thinking forward. Yes, Kotter International uses slightly new terminology around the 8 steps, but the main change that Accelerate introduced was a greater sense of urgency to the process, the consequent need for concurrency of the steps, and a determination that complex organisations need to introduce elements of a more agile, entrepreneurial approach.

The comparison of the older and more recent approach is this:

Leading Change’s original 8-Step Process

Lead change in a rigid, sequential process
Create a small, powerful core group to drive change
Function within a traditional hierarchy
Focus on doing one new thing very well and then move onto the next thing

Accelerate’s new thinking

Run the eight steps concurrently and continuously
Form a large cohort of volunteers from throughout all levels and divisions of the organization to drive the change
Create a network of change agents that can act in an entrepreneurial way, outside the traditional hierarchy, to respond in a more flexible, agile way
Constantly look for opportunities, and set up initiatives to capitalise on them rapidly

Kotter has stayed at the forefront of thinking about organisational leadership. He now argues that constant disruption from turbulent market shifts is the biggest challenge business leaders face. And agility is the skill they need. Perhaps not surprisingly, his HBR article ‘Accelerate!’ is another of their most widely requested reprints.

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Posted on July 7, 2015March 19, 2018 by Mike Clayton

Rosabeth Moss Kanter: Change Master

Rosabeth Moss Kanter is one of the foremost academics working in the management arena. Her academic CV is second to none, and it is the sophistication of her insights and the depth of her research that have earned her the huge respect she has garnered. But hers are not merely incremental ideas – her work has charted some of the biggest issues facing organisations from the 1970s to today.

Short Biography

Rosabeth Moss was born in 1943 and grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. She was educated at the elite Bryn Mawr College, where she studied English and Sociology, where she also met her first husband, Stuart Kanter. She graduated in 1964 and went on to earn an MA and PhD in Sociology, at the University of Michigan.

Following her PhD, Moss Kanter’s first academic appointment was at Brandeis University, as Assistant Professor of Sociology. She stayed there until 1977, during which time her first husband died and she married Barry Stein, with whom she later (1977) founded a management consultancy, called Goodmeasure Inc, to sell her consulting services to many of the largest US corporations.

1977 was a key year for Moss Kanter. She also moved to become a Professor of Sociology and Professor of Organisational Management at Yale, where she remained until 1986, when she moved to Harvard Business School as a Professor of Business Administration. From 1979 to 1986, she was also a Visiting Professor at the Sloane School of Management at MIT.

The centrality of 1977, however, is because it was the year that saw the publication of the first of Moss Kanter’s books – and one that made a huge impact. It was lauded in its own right and has been seen, in retrospect, as the first of a triptych of connected and hugely important works. We will look at them below.

As well as being an academic and consultant, Moss Kanter has a slew of prestigious awards,and is also notable as the last academic to edit the Harvard Business Review (1989-92) and as an advisor to presidential candidate Michael Dukakis.

But it is the breadth and depth of Moss Kanter’s work we need to focus on. And there is so much of note that we need to get started right away.

Moss Kanter’s Big-three Works

1977 saw the publication of a revolutionary book; ‘Men and Women of the Corporation‘. It analyses the distribution of power within a large US corporation and how white men dominated, leaving women and ethnic minorities disempowered. Her research demonstrated that it was not the behaviours of women and minorities that created this power gap, but the very system within which they worked, and the structures of power and opportunity. At the time, this was a revolutionary insight. Moss Kanter showed the importance of creating change to empower everyone.

With the great pressures for change that she identified, we can see a logical progression in Moss Kanter’s next book, 1983’s ‘The Change Masters: Corporate Entrepreneurs at Work‘. Shockingly, this astonishingly good and important book is out of print; to me, it is her most important. It describes how some companies and some individuals master the process of change through integrating and innovating, moving right to the edge of their capabilities, and benchmarking themselves against their aspirations, rather than against the status quo in their market place. She refers to ‘New Entrepreneurs’; change masters within a business that radically improve it, rather than leaving and starting afresh somewhere else. They transform vision into reality. Once again, the concept of empowerment features strongly, as does the need for joined up networks of communication, and decentralisation of resources.

The third book in the triptych looks at the changes US corporations needed to make to remain competitive in the global environment of the 1980s and 90s. Published in 1989, ‘When Giants Learn to Dance‘ likens the global economy to a sporting competition. What struck me was her articulation of seven skills that characterise the most successful ‘business athletes’;

ability to get results without authority, through influence alone
competing positively, through co-operation, rather than negatively through aggression
maintaining the highest ethical standards
self confidence tempered by humility
an understanding of the importance of process for getting things done
relationship building, across functions, departments, and organisations
achievement focus – what McClelland would describe as a high nAch

More Recent Work

It is only space, not a critique on the works themselves, that prevents me from detailing Moss Kanter’s works, from 1992’s ‘The Challenge of Organizational Change‘ to ‘Move: Putting America’s Infrastructure Back in the Lead‘, published a few months before this blog, in spring of 2015. Along the way, there have been:

1995: World Class: Thriving Locally in the Global Economy
1997: Rosabeth Moss Kanter on the Frontiers of Management (a collation of Moss Kanter’s writing)
2000: Evolve: Succeeding in the Digital Culture of Tomorrow
2004: Confidence: How Winning Streaks and Losing Streaks Begin and End (about turnarounds)
2007: America the Principled: 6 Opportunities for Becoming a Can-Do Nation Once Again
2009: Supercorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good

A Summary of Moss Kanter’s Themes

Rosabeth Moss Kanter is notable as an academic of business, but her approach has always remained a staunchly sociological one. Her focus on empowerment has followed closely on that of previous thinkers in humanistic management and particularly echoes the work of Mary Parker Follett, whom she admires greatly. Like Follett, she takes a very much integrative attitude, valuing holistic management structures, rather than segmented corporations. This is a theme that comes out strongly in both Change Masters and Giants. She describes these as characteristics of a ‘post-entrepreneurial firm’, where innovation is the principle benefit of combining the the strength of a large organisation with the agility of a small one.

Her writing is characterised by three admirable characteristics that are often not found together: subtle and complex ideas, detailed research evidence, and a highly readable writing style.

The Advanced Leadership Initiative

I want to end with a short reference to Harvard University’s Advanced Leadership Initiative, which Moss Kanter leads, as Chair and Director. It aims to prepare ‘a leadership force of experienced leaders who can address challenging national and global problems in their next stage of life’. These are men and women who, after their primary income-earning years, want to contribute to community and public service for their next years of life, using the skills they already have, to make an impact on significant social problems, in health, welfare, children, and the environment. I know little more about it than this, but what a wonderful initiative. A kind of lower-key version of The Elders, I guess.

Moss Kanter talks about leadership as being about leading positive change in this 17 minute TED talk, ‘Six keys to leading positive change‘.

And more…

There is a good selection of short videos and articles by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, on some of her latest thinking, on the Big Think website.

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Posted on November 6, 2012March 19, 2018 by Mike Clayton

Keep it SIMPLE

Regular readers will know that I am a sucker for acronyms – although I don’t always love them. This one, I particularly like, and it comes from the heart of a change management and coaching process, called Solution Focus.

What the authors, Paul Z Jackson and Mark McKergow, offer is a change of focus from the problem to the solution. A nice shift in perspective and one that chimes well with another interesting change management methodology, Appreciative Inquiry (AI).

SIMPLE

The acronym encompasses the authors’ attitudes nicely:

Solutions
– not problems

Inbetween
– the interaction between people is where to look

Make use of what’s there
– very much the AI approach

Possibilities
– look in the past, present and future

Language
– keep it simple (and ‘clean’?)

Every case is different
– so don’t try stock solutions

The Solution Focus

In an exceptional book, the authors take us through a set of tools that will help you move from the present towards a future you design following these six principles. Another feature of the book is its introduction of the authors’ own coaching model, OSKAR Model. This makes a feature of the importance of getting a perspective on the scale of the problem, which the GROW and its many variants do not explicitly include (although Sir John Whitmore certainly uses the principle. Oskar was one of my ‘infinite number of coaching acronyms’ in an earlier blog.

Outcome
Scaling
Know How
Application
Review

So here’s the deal

If you are interested in either coaching or the management of change, and you are not familiar with The Solution Focus, it is a worthwhile read. The authors offer a distinctive and insightful take on the change process at a personal and group level.

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Posted on June 5, 2012March 19, 2018 by Mike Clayton

Management Secrets of Queen Elizabeth II

This blog is published on a Bank Holiday, so we don’t expect many people to be at work, reading it. But a diamond jubilee is a big deal – and so is Queen Elizabeth II. Over the last sixty years, she has proved herself, among much else, a great manager. Let’s look at how.

1. Professionalism

The Queen is the consummate professional – putting in many hours of work every day (still) and, until recently, maintaining a work schedule that would make Apprentice candidates and Dragons shudder.

2. Chief Executive

She is Chief Executive of one of the nation’s oldest established, biggest and most successful family businesses. And she has run it pretty well. Whilst openly acknowledging the occasional wayward members of the family, and allowing the odd unsuccessful venture from some of them, she has ensured that the succession is assured with all of the major players showing signs of commitment to the business and high levels of professionalism themselves.

3. Mastering a Brief

The Queen prepares well for every engagement, famously knowing all about the people she meets, from Lord Lieutenant to Lunchtime Assistant (Dinner Lady in old money). And she also keeps up with her red boxes (literally, red boxes in which Government papers are sent to her daily), devoting many hours each week to assimilate everything the Government sends her.

4. Brand Management

Her identity and that of her family, the House of Windsor, remains clear and, despite some setbacks, currently has not only great name recognition (“The Royal Family”) but also high levels of brand approval. It has adapted well to modern media and the website is supplemented by YouTube, Flickr and Facebook pages, and a Twitter stream @TheBritishMonarchy. I doubt that the Queen herself tweets – but how many CEOs do?

5. Financial Control

No longer right at the top of the Sunday Times Rich List (now at 262, with £310m), this could be argued to be a weak area, but she has reduced the scale of the civil list and, unlike some of the higher fliers, is not running a global business.

6. Coaching

The Queen’s regular meetings with her many Prime Ministers have, by many accounts, often taken the form of a non-judgemental conversation, in which she asks many probing and insightful questions. In management, there’s a word for that style of conversation.

7. Change Management

A lot is made of the continuity of the British monarchy, but the reality is one of constant change. The last sixty years have been no exception. And whilst she has avoided the pitfalls that led predecessors to far more rapid change (Magna Carta, Civil War like Stephen/Matilda, Charles/Parliament, Roses etc, or reformation), she has created a highly agile institution that, whilst in no way a creature of the twenty first century, at least looks fit to continue within it.

Management Pocketbooks you might Enjoy

The Modern Monarch’s Pocketbook has been delayed, so in the meantime, if you are a UK resident and reading this on the Bank Holiday, enjoy the end of your break.

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Posted on September 15, 2011March 19, 2018 by Mike Clayton

The Onion Model of Resistance

The Onion Model of Resistance is at the heart of the Handling Resistance Pocketbook. It is a model I developed initially to describe resistance to change.
I subsequently generalised it to cover handling:

resistance to ideas in a presentation
sales objections
resistance in a learning environment
resistance to engagement

I recently had a couple of articles published by Training Journal, which I have put onto my Handling Resistance blog:

I hope you will enjoy them.

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Posted on April 19, 2011March 19, 2018 by Mike Clayton

How to Understand Resistance and Handle it Effectively

Mike’s first law of change: “Resistance is inevitable”

There’s no getting around it, so all you can do is to embrace it, and engage with your resisters. But how can you do so positively, and increase your chances of a successful transition?

That’s the reason I developed my Onion Model of Resistance, which I started working on back in the 1990s. It helps us to understand the nature of the resistance we encounter and leads us towards effective strategies.

Five Layers of Resistance

There are five layers of resistance that we encounter and they are summarised in the image below. (click to enlarge)

What we find is that, as we uncover a layer of resistance, there is often another layer beneath it. Each layer is psychologically deeper, it is emotionally hotter, and it is harder to deal with.

Harmonious Engagement with the Resistance

My Golden Rule for Handling Resistance is:

‘I will always respect my resisters’

This means I need to use a harmonious approach that does not clash with them nor seek to put them down. Our instinctive approaches, to blame, bully, plead, fight, do deals or lie, do not work – or, if they do, are not sustainable. In my talk – and in the book – I listed a dozen or so techniques, inspired by the principles of Aikido, a Japanese martial art, sometimes called the ‘way of peace’, or ’the way of harmony’.

Three things to remember

The talk ended with three things to remember:

Resistance is part of the process. It is inevitable.
Don’t fear it: embrace it.
There is always a reason for the resistance you get.
It may not be rational, but you can understand it,
and you can deal with it.
Above all, always respect your resisters.

Management Pocketbooks you might enjoy

The Onion Model, how to handle resistance to ideas, to sales, and to change, along with a host of tips are all in the Handling Resistance Pocketbook.

For more on the Onion Model…

…take a look at this earlier blog, on Handling Sales Objections.

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Posted on November 30, 2010March 19, 2018 by Mike Clayton

Truly Radical!

Change is everywhere and whether from incoming governments or new management teams, one of the most ubiquitous refrains is:

‘We must be radical’

But what does radical really mean?

Let’s get to the root of this (ahem)

Getting to the root of a meaning in English, often takes us back to Latin. This is no exception, and what we unearth is the Latin word ‘radix’. Radix gives us ‘radical’ and also ‘radish’ the common, peppery and delicious root vegetable. Radix means ‘root’.

Picture credit: La Grande Farmers’ Market

A radical solution is one that takes us to the root of the problem, or back to basics, you might say. So truly radical solutions should not involve an over-throw of what has gone before; they should build on the best of what already exists.

Appreciative Inquiry

Appreciative Inquiry, or AI as it is sometimes called, is formal methodology for discovering the best of what already exists, and using it as a basis for designing effective change. It has powerful links with Positive Psychology and Positive Organisational Psychology, and and rejects the language of ‘problems’ in favour of ‘possibilities’ to be explored.

The AI process has four Steps.

A systematic effort to discover the memories, stories and knowledge that captures the best of what an organisation has done and is doing.

Articulate how an organisation could be at its very best, using pictures, narratives, quotes and statements.
.

Work together to figure out how to create your dream, by designing processes, collaborations and a culture that will bring it to life.

Make things happen. Invite others to follow, inspiring them with the dream and empowering them with the design.

While we wait

… for the Appreciative Inquiry Pocketbook, The Appreciative Inquiry Commons is the principal resource for information, ideas and tools for this extremely powerful change management technology.

Some Management Pocketbooks you might Enjoy

The Managing Change Pocketbook

The Strategy Pocketbook

The Diversity Pocketbook

The Improving Efficiency Pocketbook

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