Blockers; they are people who deliberately try to stop or slow down a process improvement. They can be found in any and every organization and are not necessarily the conventional, senior members. In fact, they can very well be young professionals who are not adaptive to changes.
Studies have revealed 4 types of blockers who come in the way of change management. Negative Blocker is the one who has a pessimistic approach towards the suggested process improvement. To counteract their pessimism it is a good tactic to involve them in a prototype project for change management.
Silent Blockers come up with their view, when there is a bottleneck in the improvement process. To bring them on board, it is vital to get them to share the ideas and suggestions, throughout the implementation process.
Agreeable Blocker hampers the change management process usually due to a political reason. Although they might agree to it in the initial meeting, they will defer in their actions later. They can be tackled if they are assured that the change and subsequent success will reflect throughout the company.
Firefighting Blocker is the one who initiates a deadlock in the process improvement mechanism, so that he can get away with the credit of having provided a temporary fix, and saving the organization. Organizations that have a culture of constant improvement, generally do have firefighting blockers.
Although blockers could be difficult to tackle, but once they understand the need for change, they do become advocates of improvement. Refresher training is often recommended to prevent champions, who haven’t participated in a long time, turning into blockers.
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