In this installment of EHSDA Shorts, Joan Peterson, vice president, Bluepoint, discusses the causes of resistance to change in organizations.
This clip is taken from a webinar titled Strategies for Combatting Change Fatigue Inside Organizations, which is available for free on-demand here.
Transcript (edited for clarity):
Peterson: Typically, what I see in a room, I’ll say, “OK, raise your hand. Do you believe people naturally resist change?” Say 90-plus percent of the room raises their hand.
And then I ask almost the same question a little bit differently and I’ll share with you the different response. The next question is, “Do you naturally resist change?”
And here’s what I typically see or hear. People kind of chuckle a little bit and they’re hesitant. And then some people raise their hand, but not as many who say, “Yep, people naturally resist change.”
I think there lies our challenge inside organizations and here’s what we know about change. We know that people don’t naturally resist change. All we have to do is look through history. We’ve changed to protect our families, just look back a few years to the pandemic. We changed how we lived. We changed how we worked to protect our families.
We’ve changed to exploit technology. Just in my lifetime, the amount of technology has impacted how I work, how I live my life, etc. We’ve changed to adapt to new environments.
As humans, we are hard wired to change, yet it shows up as resistance inside organizations and we know it’s difficult. We see the resistance and I love [what you wrote] in the chat pod, Catherine: Comfort is usually welcomed and change is considered uncomfortable for many.
I’d like to share with you part of what we have seen and part of what we know about change. We are hardwired for change and it shows up as resistance for some of the reasons that Catherine put in the chat pod.
I’d like to share two pieces of research. One is a book that came out quite a while back called Immunity to Change. The researchers, Kegan and Lahy looked at what causes us not to change, even if we know it’s good for us. So what they identified is what they called competing commitments.
I’ll give you two examples. One comes right from the data that that they wrote about from the research that they did in their book. They did one of their experiments inside a hospital system and they took a group of individuals who were in the hospital for heart issues, heart attack, heart surgery, etc. And when they were exiting the hospital, they [were given] exercise, dietary, lifestyle, medication changes that they needed to do in order to maintain their health.
And [the researchers] interviewed each one and said, “Do you know what medication, exercise, and dietary menu is?” Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
“And you know, if you don’t do this, [you’ll] be back in the hospital or worse. It’s important that you do it.” Yes, yes, yes.
So they followed this group and a year later they brought them back. The consequences [were] pretty significant, about 70% of the people did not follow through on the three categories that they needed to maintain. They started to interview these individuals to find out well what got in the way. And the one story that stuck out for me, the researcher said it was this one younger gentleman, younger than most of the other patients. And he kept saying, “I don’t know why I didn’t take the meds.” And finally he said, “I know why I didn’t take the meds. My dad takes a pill every day and he’s old. I’m not old.”
Competing commitments and what we see show up inside organizations during times of change are competing commitments. And another example for me is I know if I get up early every morning and I exercise or I run, that I’m going to look better, I’m going to feel better, I’m going to be healthier. Yet I press the snooze alarm more frequently than I’d like to admit. Competing commitments. So what we know during times of change is that we do experience competing commitments.