“People resist change” is one of those management clichés that gets repeated endlessly.
But people change voluntarily all the time.
What they tend to resist is uncertainty about what change means for them:
Do I still have a job?
Will I be competent in the new world?
Who makes decisions now?
What happens to my status?
Why are we doing this?
Does leadership actually know where this is going?
**Organisations frequently make that uncertainty worse by communicating the programme rather than resolving the questions people actually have.
Resistance Is Information
Organisations often treat resistance as something to overcome. They identify stakeholders who are resistant to change, develop communication plans, create change champions and look for ways to move people from resistance towards acceptance.
But that approach starts with an assumption: the change is right and the person resisting it is the problem.
What if they’re not?
Resistance can tell us something about what is happening inside an organisation.
Perhaps people don’t understand why the change is necessary, maybe they understand it perfectly well but don’t trust the people delivering it.
Perhaps responsibilities have become unclear, people don’t believe they have the skills they will need, or previous transformation programmes have taught them to be sceptical about promises of a better future.
Sometimes people genuinely have something to lose and sometimes the person labelled as resistant has simply noticed something that those leading the change haven’t.
The people closest to customers, processes and technology often understand consequences that aren’t visible from the programme office or leadership team. Their concerns may be inconvenient, but that doesn’t make them wrong.
If resistance is treated simply as behaviour that needs correcting, organisations risk suppressing exactly the information they need.
Resistance isn’t necessarily an obstacle to change. Sometimes it’s information about the change.
That doesn’t mean every objection is valid or that change should stop whenever somebody disagrees, it means resistance should create curiosity before it creates a response.
Instead of asking:
How do we get these people on board?
Perhaps the better question is:
What are they telling us that we haven’t understood yet?
Clarity Without Certainty
This does not mean organisations can remove uncertainty from change - they can’t.
Complex change is uncertain by definition. Decisions will be made with incomplete information, plans inevitably shift and evolve. Some of the consequences will only become apparent once the organisation starts moving.
The temptation for leaders is to respond by creating the appearance of certainty.
Detailed roadmaps are produced and timelines become commitments. Communications describe a future state as though every step towards it is already understood.
There is one thing that isn’t always taken into consideration in these cases - people are remarkably good at recognising when certainty is being manufactured. When reality inevitably diverges from the plan, that manufactured certainty can quickly become a reason not to trust it.
Perhaps the objective shouldn’t be certainty at all.
Certainty tells people what will happen. Clarity helps people understand what is happening.
Leaders can be clear about why change is necessary, they can be clear about what has already been decided and what remains open.
Leaders can acknowledge what they don’t yet know and can explain where people have influence, where they don’t, and how decisions will be made as new information emerges.
Most importantly, they can listen when people tell them something isn’t working and that creates something certainty cannot: agency.
People may not be able to control everything happening around them, but understanding the change, being able to question it and having some influence over how it develops makes uncertainty easier to navigate.
Change will still be uncomfortable, there will still be disagreement and there will still be people who simply don’t support the direction being taken.
**The goal isn’t to eliminate resistance - it is to understand it.
Perhaps the question organisations should be asking isn’t:
How do we stop people resisting change?
They should be asking:
What would people need in order to navigate the uncertainty that change creates?
