“People resist change” is utter nonsense

Back in the eighties, when I was still young and impressionable (ha!), when change management was still in its infancy (certainly compared to now), I learned — or rather, was told — that people don’t like change and will resist it.

Old habits

Old habits die hard, they say.

We can all recount stories about trying to change our habits and failing miserably. Falling back into the old ones in as soon as we hit a bump in the road.

You have to work hard to change (yourself) and even harder to get other people to change. We all “know” this is true. We’ve experienced it many times. As the instigator of change and as the object (subject?) of someone else’s desire for change.

Still… Something doesn’t quite add up.

Changing habits

Charles Duhigg showed us that changing your habits doesn’t have to be all that hard. A habit is no more than a stimulus response cycle and the way to change it is to pay attention for a couple of weeks and do something different in response to the stimulus. No rocket science.

It can be even easier or quicker. There are plenty of examples to be found of people changing their habits on the spot.

Take smoking. I started smoking when I was 14. Twenty years later I quit and never looked back. I am not gifted with more discipline or resolve than the next person. Also, I am not alone. I personally know a lot of people that quit smoking on the spot, or changed some other habit as if it had never been a habit in the first place.

Driving to work is an interesting one. How often do you find yourself at your previous employer? Oh yes, the first few days, maybe weeks, may have you turning the old way, but it takes only a couple of weeks before habit drives you to your new employer’s office when you are not paying attention on the weekend.

And phone usage. One day kids and adults alike are playing games, texting or doing other stuff on their phones while lying on couches, sitting in chairs or just generally hanging about. Just a couple of days later, whole throngs of people are walking outside, heads down, intently peering at their phones, breaking into trots, uttering gleeful sounds and generally getting more exercise than they have been for years. WT…? Pokemon Go, anyone?

So, why does the “old habits die hard” myth persist, when people obviously can and do change their habits in a heartbeat?

Resistance is (not) futile

The Borg actively tell whomever they meet that resistance is futile. In both the series and real life, resistance rarely is futile. It may not always bring you — or retain — all you want, but I wouldn’t call it futile.

When do people change in a heartbeat or do not resist change?

• When it’s fun.
• When it’s important to them.
• When they benefit in some, sometimes weird, way. And especially when the benefit is gained in the short term.
• When they see the path forward to a benefit in the long term.
• When it’s utterly unimportant to them how they do something and your way doesn’t inconvenience them too much.
• When they like you enough to put in some (extra) effort.

When do people resist change?

• When they don’t trust the message.
• When they don’t trust the messenger.
• When it is imposed upon them.
• When it isn’t clear what is expected of them or how they will be assessed.
• When they don’t see how it benefits them or those they care for.
• When they do see how it disadvantages or inconveniences them or those they care for.
• When it isn’t important to them and does require more effort than what they do now.
• When they don’t care for whomever it does benefit.

Persistent nonsense

The myth of people resisting change is persisted by people seeking to attain a goal and imposing changes on the people the need to execute their plans.

I have fallen prey to this myself.

I’d see a problem, come up with a solution, get all the arguments for and against across the table, get everybody’s agreement and feel pumped that we’ll have improved. Days, weeks and months later, nothing has changed. Everything is still going as it was, the problem hasn’t gone away, but nobody seems to care.

The easy explanation is “people resist change”.

It’s utter nonsense.

People didn’t change because they resisted change. They didn’t change because they had no reason to.

Cliff hanger

Getting people to change when all you have is influence and no hierarchical — or other — power over them, is a challenge. One very much akin to working with animals that are free to come and go as they see fit. More on that in a later story or stories.

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