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|In: Leadership|Last Updated:

If you believe people automatically resist change, offer them a new car of their choosing, no strings attached.

That’s a gedankenexperiment – a thought experiment, that is, which I proposed two weeks ago to demonstrate that the hard-wired-resistance-to-change theory of human behavior is simply wrong. If employees don’t object to a free car, then clearly they don’t instinctively resist change.

Analyze why nearly everyone would embrace this change enthusiastically while resisting, say, an ERP implementation, and you’ll understand how to lead organizational change.

First, notice employees get to choose their car. Offer a free Lumina and the acceptance rate would plummet. Why? You made the decision, not them, that’s why. And also because it’s a Lumina.

For the most part, people embrace changes they control, and dislike being controlled. Which is why, when you lead a change, you need an involvement plan. Project teams must figure out which decisions end-users will make or be consulted on.

What’s another reason employees would happily take the car while resisting other changes? It benefits them, of course. People embrace change that’s good for them and resist change that’s bad for them. (Most leadership training is built on sophisticated psychological concepts like this, by the way.)

So the second component of any change management plan is establishing this universal design principle: To the extent possible, project teams will design all changes to benefit those affected by the change.

These elements aren’t hard to build into a project. To illustrate: Early in my career I designed a bar-code-based raw materials tracking system. As part of the process I attended a union safety meeting to present what we had in mind. Our process design called for attaching three-part perforated tracking cards to the items to be tracked. Warehouse staff were to wear scanners – two piece affairs, connected by a cable – on belt holsters, removing one part of a card at each tracking location, scanning it, and dropping it in a box.

The union representative was outraged – the cables, he hold me, created a workplace hazard. Instead of arguing, I asked what would work better. Within fifteen minutes the warehouse staff had designed a simple table to hold the bar code scanners and drop boxes for items as they passed by in the work queue.

I was quite proud of that table. And all I had to do to design it was ask a question.

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|In: Business Ethics|Last Updated:

I’ve figured out the difference between scientific knowledge and business knowledge. Scientific knowledge depends on facts, logic, and the rigorous testing of ideas in the laboratory and field. Business knowledge depends on the assertion of pet biases with great confidence and exorbitant billing rates.

For example …

By now I’ve read or listened to at least a dozen authorities in the field of managing organizational change. Most begin by explaining that resistance to change is wired into the human brain, natural and instinctive, the result of millions of years of evolution.

As it happens, my graduate studies were in the field of sociobiology, so I’m confident I know more than these “experts” about what is and isn’t hardwired into the human brain. Yes, there is some hard wiring in the human brain. For example, the ability to learn language is a native capability. Bipedal walking is another piece of standard equipment, although the ability to simultaneously chew gum must be learned.

So there is some hard wiring. Not a lot, but some. But no, resistance to change isn’t any of it, nor do people (at least, not those raised in Western cultures; I’m insufficiently knowledgeable about the rest to speak with confidence) resist all change as a matter of learned behavior either.

Want proof? Here’s a simple experiment you can perform in the privacy of your own organization. Offer your employees an upgrade to a piece of core technology they use every day: Buy them a new car of their choosing. You’ll pay for the gas, insurance, maintenance and repairs, and there are no strings attached.

How many employees do you really think will resist this change?

Few people automatically resist change. What’s most commonly mistaken for resistance to change is something quite different: Fear of the unknown.

Most people do fear the unknown. The nature vs nurture question notwithstanding, it’s easy to understand why the unknown is to be feared. Whether you imagine a Toe Monster lurking under your bed, a crazed mugger lurking in some dark alley, or layoffs lurking under the current process re-engineering effort in your company, the possible risks of the unknown — death, destruction and unemployment — outweigh the possible benefits.

Which is why the most useful tools in any change leader’s toolkit are the “Three C’s”: Communication, communication, and yet more communication.

That’s what’s required to change the unknown into the known. If the known is a new car, so much the better. If not, at least employees know the worst that can happen, which is always better than the worst they can imagine.

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