The most important fact that you need to know about resistance to change is that it's normal. Your employees are not weird and they don't purposefully make every change difficult.
The second most important fact is that you can prevent a whole lot of resistance to change by planning and implementing the change properly. You need to involve as many employees as possible and make significant efforts to explain why a change is necessary. The more that you and your employees see the need for the change and are change ready, the more support for the change you are likely to engender.
Many of you who are reading this post may find yourselves in the unenviable position of bearing the bad news to the troops. You may not have decided upon the change - hopefully you had some input - yet you are expected to lead adoption and implementation with your reporting staff.
If you are a senior manager, you will benefit from this information to avoid fueling the fire of your managers' resistance. But, this post is also aimed directly at the millions of managers who are asked to change something at work - a decision with which they may not even agree. Plus, senior managers may have done a lousy job of bringing you on board for the changes. Yet, you must bring others - and lead the change implementation.
Here's what you need to do to reduce resistance to change.
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