Vana wrote,
"Some people will resist. Yet others rush pell mell into the fury and the
storm of change. We truly have no say over the tendency of an individual
to pursue or flee from participation in becoming part of an LO."
I frequently become involved with organizations experiencing
transformative or fundamental change, be it from the more traditional
organizational archetype towards an LO, or from an LO to an even more
natural or conscious workplace. I occassionally see resistance to
change--and most often, from people who are fairly ego-centric. I don't
agree with Bill's earlier comment that "you apply change, and you get
resistance. Period." Lots of times that happens, but lots of times it
doesn't.
I have found a couple things help a great deal. First, the more that
people are directly involved in deciding what changes to make, and helping
to make them happen, the less "resistance" there is (what is resistance,
anyway? I often think it's been mis-named), like others have mentioned.
We also make use of the Kolbe technology so people can understand how they
naturally take action (the conative dimension of the mind, as in
cognitive, affective, and conative), their natural strengths.
The conative dimension helps us to see who will, as Vana described, "rush
pell mell into the fury" of change (the one's who typically ask 'why not?
we can always change it again if it doesn't work'); those who will need
change to be more structured or systematized ('how does this affect me,
how does this affect all of these other things?'); other people who will
need more information (the 'why?' folks); and still others who will most
need to "see" how things will look or work. This is an
oversimplification, of course, but perhaps it will give you an idea. We
find that when change is implemented in a way that is inconsistent with a
person's natural way of doing things, they tend to balk. When these
strengths are recognized and valued and embraced as part of the whole
decision-making and change processes, suddenly "resistance" is no longer
there.
So, while we perhaps have no say in a person's tendency to pursue or flee
from change, there are tools available to help us to at least get a handle
on what those tendencies might be, and accommodate them appropriately.
(Lots of research available on this, though little done in the western
world other than in the Center for Conative Research in Arizona).
And sometimes, "resistance" seems to disappear when we rename it, see it
as a symptom of underlying things we need to bring to the surface.
--Terri Deems tadeems@aol.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>