You Started It! Change Resistance is Natural & Predictable!

You Started It! Change Resistance is Natural & Predictable! 
 

Nick Pope
Australian Defence Force


If you always do what you’ve always done, you always get what you’ve always gotten
_{(Potter, 1981)}
 

It’s time to have a conversation if resistance to change is actually a bad thing. Not much in life is black & white, and categorising our people as being either for or against change, is at best an oversimplification and at worst is poor leadership. We need to stop being shocked that not everyone reacts the way we would like to our brilliant change plan. People think differently, that’s diversity; that same diversity of thought increases the probability of resistance to change, due to difference of opinion. I will use physics concepts and leadership theory to offer a different perspective on change, and how leaders can harness resistance to improve the chances of successful change management. 

Third Law of Motion

A simple question for us all to ask is, ‘did the resistance in question start prior to the change commencing, or did it kick off after the change was initiated?’ Chances are that it is the latter, which is where we can bring in our first concept: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. All large organisations, and the ADF is no exception, operates at a relative equilibrium and baseline configuration: the steady state. If we push at an object that is at equilibrium, is it surprising that is pushes back with equal and opposing force? 

The point here is that resistance should not be a surprise, it should be anticipated as a universal phenomenon of an equal and opposing force to the ‘force of change’ being applied. In most cases, you will have had no idea they feel the way they do until you try to impose change. Consequently, you have provoked the resistance by seeking to change something. When we know something is coming, we can be proactive rather than reactive. 
 

Field Theory

The brakes being applied on an aircraft is usually a good thing, until they prevent a take-off roll from happening. Additionally, it’s worth noting that no matter the power of engine thrust, the opposing force of the brakes is stronger. Lewin (1936) used electromagnetic fields to explain a great number of things, including forces that influence groups of people. If the sum of the resisting forces is greater than the promoting forces, things stay the way they are. 

This is where rank doesn’t have a multiplying effect, it’s not a rank game, it’s a physics game. To implement change, we need to build up promoting forces to be greater than the opposing. This is a large part of what change agents seek to accomplish. It’s not to just sell the change, (keep away from sales pitches) it’s to engage in dialogue and co-construct (Jabri, 2022) the case for change, building up those vital promoting forces. 

Truly effective change agents are those who were against change at first, but now see its value and are actively promoting the change agenda. Regardless of the complexity of who is for and who is against, the physics remains that effective change requires promoting forces to be greater than the resistance.
 

Change as Three Steps (CATS)

In the military, having processes that are known, rehearsed and consistently employed is a good thing, right up until the point you want things to change. As a military, things tend to be set, familiar, reliable and agreed as a baseline configuration. As Lt. Gen Donahue notes, culture is important, to ensure we outthink and outwit the adversary, but it must be lived through process (Byerly, 2024). Lewin (1947) calls this being frozen and we need three basic steps to change it.

CATS is a favourite of the management consulting world (Cummings, Bridgman & Brown, 2016), but it has its roots in science as part of Lewin’s most famous work (Burnes, 2019). If things are set in ice, it stands to reason that before you can change it, we need to unfreeze it (that’s step one). This is the building of promoting forces, encouraging the dialogue for change and articulating what success looks like. 

Step two is changing, moving from the current paradigm to the desired state. This is where the results of our planning, and the balance of promoting and resisting forces will be played out on the change battlespace. Only go as deep as you must to make the change stick, lest you discover unintended consequences and organisational behaviours previously submerged (Harrison, 1970).

If we arrive at our desired end state, we need to refreeze things to stabilise the change and transition to business as usual (step three). Entrenching this new equilibrium prevents reversion to how things were. The new routines, procedures create new resistant forces that defend against reversion to the previous state (Burnes, 2020). If we fail to bed down the change, refreeze our processes, we risk reversion to the previous status quo. The military needs structure and processes. Choosing to ignore our people’s need for grounding, or writing resistance off as not being agile, is a recipe for failure that is wholly self-inflicted. 
 

The Great Salesperson

Commanders often fall prey to Kaplan’s (1964) ‘law of the instrument.’ The need for change and the solution luckily matches the plan the commander had anyway. We apply our leadership training about delivering an inspiring brief to change. We think that we will overcome any resistance before it even starts, with our amazing logic, or genius argument, or Patton-style inspiration. This simply will not work. It will fail for many reasons but mainly because we are underestimating the human connections behind the status quo. 

Jabri (2022) offers a key distinction in communicating change that is monologic vs dialogic communication. No matter how we rationalise it to ourselves, us talking to them is monologic. Monologing the need for change with a one-way conversation is ineffective, its susceptible to confirmation bias and suppresses resistance. Suppressing resistance usually causes it to grow, not diminish. If we want change to succeed, we must engage with others, seek out the difference of opinion and build the case for change through dialogue. 
 

Bring it into the daylight – Better the enemy you know

In nearly all other aspects of our planning we seek to understand all the ways in which our plan will not work. So why should change be any different? The best way to overcome opposing forces is to quantify what they are; this is why resistance is a good thing. It allows the driver of change to formulate a better plan, to target dialogue where key differences in opinion lie. 

Instead of giving a rousing speech for change then being immediately frustrated with the presence of resistance, start with the assumption there will be resistance. Draw out the opposing forces through dialogue and conversation into the sunlight, then seek to convert them to promoting forces. Those who were supressed start to seek ways to beat the system (Blake and Mouton, 1970). We must not sow the seeds for future defeat by dismissing resistance, creating an opposing force change agent who fights to get things back the way they were. 

Having rank, authority and a good idea is often not enough these days. A contemporary leader consistently adapts their leadership style to suit the situation. So why not view change in the same way. Effective change it is not about individual achievement, but rather how many people can be brought along for the journey. We operate as successful teams or individual failures, change management is no different.

Through embracing the diversity of resistance, we can identify elements of the change proposal that can be adapted, improved to increase the overall chances of success. It also means the change manager can determine those who have unconstructive resistance, who don’t seek to improve and are just digging in to keep things as they are. However, quantifying the true resistance that cannot be won over, gives us insight into how much promoting forces will be required to overcome the resistant forces.
 

Conclusion

Dr. Martin Luther King said that a leader does not search for consensus, they mould it (2010). Confirmation bias is a great danger to any leader; not far behind sits the ever-present danger of hubris that we are right, and they are wrong. Categorising people in binary terms of being for or against is not a sound approach to military leadership or effective change, overall making your change process less likely to succeed.

We need to avoid reverting to coercion and monologic communication when confronted with resistance (Endrejat et al, 2021). We should anticipate that we will experience equal and opposite forces, that change requires promoting forces to be greater than opposing, that we must unfreeze the current state, move to the new state then re-freeze. 

By seeking out the resistance rather than avoiding it, we can stop being reactive and start being proactive. Leaders can formulate a better plan and leverage other aspects of leadership and social mastery to engage with opposing views and build consensus. Or we can keep on doing it the way we’ve always done it, taking the opening quote into account.