Resistance to change in organisations

Article by Massimo Berlingozzi – “A GUIDE TO REALISING OUR POTENTIALITY” – UNIVERSO CONSULTING – SEPTEMBER 2017_HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

MANY YEARS AGO KONRAD LORENZ, the famous Viennese ethologist who won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1973, told a very interesting story during one of his lectures.
The protagonists of the story are two dogs, the first walking with his master, the second in the garden of his owners’ villa.
Every day, during the daily ritual of the walk, the two dogs confront each other, separated by the fence, showing very strong aggression.
Until one day, in the middle of their dispute, they find the gate open.
And what do the two dogs do, finally able to turn their long-displayed aggression into action?
They go back, until they find the net that separates them, and resume doing what they have always done.
The moral of this story, only seemingly paradoxical, is very clear, and the ensuing reflection really rich in meaning because of the analogies with the behaviour of individuals and organisations.

The phenomenon of resistance to change has its roots in the biological mechanism of homeostasis: the ability of living systems (but organisations also behave this way) to maintain their internal structure in equilibrium regardless of environmental perturbations.
But what happens when the internal balance proves to be no longer functional in the face of stronger, or completely unexpected, demands for change from outside?
It is precisely in these situations that resistance to change manifests itself through ineffective behaviour and paradoxical solutions: attempts to maintain established response strategies, even if they are now openly dysfunctional.
Shifting patterns, looking at things from a new point of view, changing paradigms, seems to be the real difficulty.

It may be useful, by way of example, to recall the emblematic story of Kodak.
It was one of its engineers (Steven Sasson) who created the first prototype of a digital camera in 1975, but the company board rejected that project because it rendered useless the object (film) that was at the origin of the company’s fortune and success.
In 2012, Kodak, a giant of North American business, declared bankruptcy.
Understanding the origin of resistance is a very important step in building an effective strategy.
Sometimes resistance is a purely cognitive problem: a lack of flexibility in dealing with patterns, models and procedures that deviate from what was previously known. The situation is certainly more complex when the resistance is of an emotional nature.
In these cases the defence often takes on a conflictual valence, because the subject (individual or group) feels threatened in terms of values, to the point of experiencing change as the complete abandonment of the aims and motivations underlying his or her identity.
Studies on change have highlighted very well the importance and value of awareness, and the first difficulty lies precisely in a correct and lucid vision of the problem.
Let us therefore try to indicate in succession the steps necessary for the effective management of these processes:
Clearly define the current situation:

1. Evaluate the solutions tried: the first phase of analysis must be followed by a path of awareness aimed at understanding the nature of the resistances that have arisen, or that we are able to foresee, together with any attempted (and failed) solutions.
2. Define the change we want to bring about: describe precisely where we want to go.
3. Establish a plan to achieve our goal: a concrete definition of means, tools, resources and timeframe to achieve the desired change.

The challenges of the future will increasingly ask us to ‘change our skin’, to modify our organisational culture, to welcome new experiences, to acquire new knowledge.
If we want to have people on our side who are motivated to undertake these changes, we must be able to indicate precisely where we are, where we want to go, and the path required to get there.