Resistance to change
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
, who is perhaps our nation’s leading expert on
organizational change, outlines ten reasons that drive resistance to educational
change initiatives:
- Surprise, Surprise! Decisions or requests that are
sprung on administrators and teachers without notice.
change will result in the “Walking off a Cliff Blindfolded” syndrome.
done to, rather than done by, those affected.
administrators and teachers to question familiar (and comfortable) routines and
habits.
initiative is temporary and it will stay incomplete, meaning the best strategy
is to lay low and not contribute to success.
of doing things was wrong. Some administrators and teachers may feel embarrassed
in front of their peers or staff.
question their ability to be effective after a change: Can I do it? How will I
do it? Will I make it in the new situation?
other projects or activities, even ones outside of work.
workloads.
real winners and losers, and people worry about where they will end up when the
project is complete.
[this list is from www.reinventingeducation.org]
What strikes me about this list is that these are quite rational concerns for
most school change initiatives. As leaders and change agents, we have to
acknowledge the validity of these concerns and address them appropriately if we
are to achieve the desired changes.
Kanter also notes that people are motivated by three key factors:
- Dissatisfaction. This can be either positive
(e.g., “We could be so much better”) or negative (e.g., “Things are really
terrible”), but people are rarely motivated to make things different when they
are perfectly satisfied with things as they are. However, recognize that it
is often more difficult to persuade people to act because of a brighter future
than because of a current crisis. This fact may be the result of the
concreteness and visibility of a crisis. Use this knowledge to your advantage,
by making the picture of the possible better future as visible and explicit as
possible.
that change is unlikely to be successful, they are rarely motivated to act on
their dissatisfaction. This is why small successes in the early stages of a
project can be very important in shifting people’s views. Remember, the
probability of success is really a question of perception, which is why [change leaders] spend time persuading people to see things differently. Moreover,
an innovative idea can transform someone’s view immediately, by
making plausible what had previously been almost unthinkable.
worth the expected effort, no amount of dissatisfaction or belief in the
probability of success will motivate people to action. Furthermore,
the result has to be worth the effort to each individual person. If the
change will result in a loss of authority for someone or in a pay cut, that
person will certainly not be motivated to make the change happen. As a
leader, you have to be able to see the change from the point of view of those
affected by it. People who see a brighter future – for themselves and for the
organization – that is worth working for will be most likely to join the
team.
These key motivating factors are interrelated, and their effect is
multiplicative, not additive. Leaders of change must keep all three motivating
factors at the forefront of their minds as they work to shift people’s
views.
Finally, I’ll leave you with this paragraph from Kanter:
Even if there is some motivation to change, there is also always some inertia
in the present. This can be both psychological (comfort, familiarity, routines
and rhythms, etc) and operational (more work, uncertainty about end results,
etc). So it’s useful to think in terms of a “hurdle rate” that has to be
exceeded before someone will be inclined to act on his or her own (intrinsic)
motivation. Often it is effective to couple these intrinsic motivations with
extrinsic factors – carrots and sticks. These extrinsic factors can be used to
help overcome resistance. Just remember that reliance on these alone, when
intrinsic motivation is not present, is notoriously dangerous: as soon as the
carrot has been eaten, or the stick removed, that’s the end of the
motivation.
Sidenote:IBM has
invested millions of dollars in the creation of the Change Toolkit, a free online
resource for K-12 educators. The Toolkit is based on Kanter’s work and is
intended to help education professionals be more effective at leading and
implementing change. The Toolkit contains a variety of resources to help leaders
implement a thoughtful, systemic approach to school change efforts and
successfully address common challenges and barriers. I use the Toolkit quite a
bit in my own teaching and encourage you to check it out (did I mention it’s
free?).
