In a 1969 article in the Harvard Business Review, Paul Lawrence noted that change
“has both a technical and a social aspect. The technical aspect of the change is the
making of a measurable modification in the physical routines of a job. The social
aspect of the change refers to the way those affected by it think it will alter their
established relationships in the organization.” When facing resistance, there is a
tendency to emphasize the benefits of the technical aspect of change. After all, we
are already convinced ourselves, so it’s easy to assume that all we need to do now
is to convince others. Lay out the perfect intellectual argument in favor of the
change, we think, and people’s resistance will vanish. Lawrence argues against that
flawed logic: “We may sometimes wish that the validity of the technical aspect of
the change were the sole determinant of its acceptability. But the fact remains that
the social aspect is what determines the presence or absence of resistance” (1969,
7).
Chapter Contents
- Anticipating Resistance
- Who Will Resist?
- Waterfallacies and Agile Phobias
- Communicating About the Change
- Hearing from Leaders
- Hearing from Peers
- The Hows and Whys of Individual Resistance
- Skeptics
- Saboteurs
- Diehards
- Followers
- Resistance as a Useful Red Flag
- Additional Reading