The standard ways of thinking about change may be creating the very problems they are being asked to address.An awful lot of change effort, time and money is typically spent engaging with, educating and securing the buy-in of people to the changes we need to make.
By seeking their buy-in, then, by implication, we are asking them to be responsible for the change's success. (Or, as the more sceptical might suggest, making them responsible for its failure). No wonder people resist buying in.
Our efforts to create buy-in are actually creating resistance. Logical resistance.
And, if they don't buy-in, what do we do then? Buy-in assumes choice. If people choose not to buy-in, do we scrap the initiative? Or do we press on and force them to do what we want regardless? In which case, did they really have a choice to begin with?
The rational response to to being presented with such a false choice is apathy and cynicism.
Resistance, apathy and cynicism. Ask any change professional and they will tell you that these will kill a change deader than roadkill. Yet our very efforts to overcome them are, in large part, responsible for creating them.
The standard answers no longer apply. To make change work, we need to do something different.
And that is why I do what I do.
Mike
(Photo credit: Jens Nicolay)
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