Mike Gort wrote:
> On Friday, July 18, 1997 12:11 AM, Vana Prewitt
> [SMTP:vprewitt@mail.rdu.bellsouth.net] wrote:
> ... The resistance is natural, and must be explored by the
> facilitators. In addition to "less sure of their positions," many other
I went to a good course (taught by IMA) once on change management. The
instructor suggested that resistance and change are related by sort of an
organizational Ohm's Law (for those who remember your physics or
electronics): you apply change, and you get resistance. Period.
The trick is whether you can manage it. If you try to surpress it, you
will still get it (by the Ohm's Law analogy, it's a law of nature), but it
will go underground where you have _no_ chance to manage it. The better
strategy, so the claim (and my experience) is to do everything you can to
get people to express their resistance openly so that you can indeed deal
with it openly.
This doesn't mean giving in to resistance. The tactic still remains to
make it increasingly easier to adopt the new ways and increasingly more
difficult to maintain the old, but people need to feel free to express
their concerns in a dialog. Who knows --- maybe they'll even surface some
important issues you've missed but need to understand. Even if they
don't, by them being able to enter into that dialog, they'll find it
easier to move forward. (And you may be moving towards a more
participatory environment, which can pay off greatly in a number of
situations.)
Regards,
Bill
-- Bill Harris Hewlett-Packard Co. R&D Engineering Processes Lake Stevens Division domain: billh@lsid.hp.com M/S 330 phone: (425) 335-2200 8600 Soper Hill Road fax: (425) 335-2828 Everett, WA 98205-1298Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>