Why Change Management is considered an 'Unholy Nexus' and resisted stoutly!

Hi. Interested in providing my response for this. As you know the adage, Nothing is permanent, so change will be there always and everywhere. Having said this, let me tell what change would cause. There will be always stakeholders who would be benefitted and who get adversely affected by the change. Grudge would be more if the affected parties are more and if the benefitted stakeholders are influential then thats where the issue starts. How often do we see an organisation (read mgmt) changes it's policies which do not go well with it's staffs. This is where it begins. There are other scenarios. Imagine you/your team want(s) to implement changes in your project and there are multiple stakeholders who need to approve this (through Change Approval Board) . You face strong resistance in getting the approval. Why ? It could be because some of the stakeholders afresh affected adversely by your changes either directly or indirectly. Or You did not seek their suggestion(Influential or key stakeholder (s)) prior to implementing the changes or did not provide prior intimation about the changes to them, or the other stakeholders have some ego problems with the stakeholder(s) to whom you are directly reporting(I have seen this happening as well).  All these things should be properly addressed. Right business case (for justifying the changes) and stakeholder mgmt are the key for a successful change management. Then Acceptance would happen.

Hi Naresh - Good perspective on change management.

 

One of the main reasons for Change Management being considered as an 'Unholy Nexus' is the fact that EVERYONE is not involved in the decision making which seems obvious. The downside is that everyone wants to be a part of the decision making process as it is considered as a matter of pride. Whoever is left out of the process feels he has been wronged and develops a revengeful state of mind. The second reason is - Few Take Decision but Many Get Impacted. E.g. Government decides to increase the tax (i know I'm taking a very sensitive subject :)). Very few people take this decision as compared to the larger audience that gets impacted by it. Most of the times, the audience does not know why taxes were increased. What they realize is ONLY the additional burden on them i.e. they don't see the big picture (I'm assuming there is one). This is the third reason

 

Resistance to change is inherent in humans. For each task (even the smallest or the most mundane of tasks) our brain wires itself in a particular way. Any change, forces it to re-wire itself which is not always an easy task. And hence the stout resistance. Re-wiring would mean you need to put in extra effort to practice the change. We all want to avoid it.

 

A good change manager pre-empts such challenges early and takes necessary steps to avoid them.