3.4 Not everyone wants to change

If you haven’t experienced genuine change resistance, you will learn it often does not manifest as direct and active opposition. It is more of a passive-aggressive phenomenon where people drag their feet, accomplish their tasks halfway, and try to ignore your requests as far as possible. Then, managers start communicating the need for the change to the personnel better. While it seems to work, it will also fail.

Change resistance generally arises from the fear of the unknown, the feeling of loss of control, or perceived threats to identity, competence, and job security. For example, bringing in AI assistance may seem to an employee like a massive threat of being gradually replaced. These feelings can be managed and redirected by communicating that the AI is there to make the employees better and more effective in their jobs, thus making them more capable and valuable to the employer.

The architect and most IT personnel were selected partly due to their willingness to develop processes and solutions, making them more open to change than most employees. It’s frighteningly easy to forget not everyone wants that. Some people want to come to work at 8 am, leave at 4 pm, and do their relatively simple thing, earning what it pays. Not everyone wants a higher salary if it comes with stepping out of their comfort zone or experiencing extra stress. These people you can not persuade them no matter how much you put effort into it.

If you work in a small startup company, you have recruited every employee because they are willing to develop everything. In larger enterprises, however, you also need tireless bureaucrats who do their simple parts in larger processes. The core requirement for those roles is not willingness to develop but willingness to be a small cog in the greater machine. These people will feel uncomfortable and even threatened by most changes. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that!

As an architect, you play a crucial role in managing change resistance. While you are not alone in being responsible for it, you should constantly scan for its indicators. When you notice change resistance, discuss it with your business stakeholders. They are better than you at managing personnel issues and finding working solutions, but your role in identifying and addressing the resistance is vital.

While there are many potential indicators of change resistance, I will list a few that should be critical signals for you to act upon: people silently disengaging, delaying tasks on purpose, avoiding meetings with challenging topics, increased absenteeism, hostile cliques forming, skepticism, drop in productivity, us vs. them mentality, and high turnover. I wouldn’t worry about the active opposition as much because they are easier to detect and work with.

The quieter ways to oppose what you are trying to accomplish are more dangerous because they can go unnoticed for a long time. An old proverb says that as long as people argue, they care. You should be more scared of what happens after everything is quiet. There’s a surprising amount of truth in that. You can fix change resistance by engaging with the people; the longer you have it unmanaged, the harder it will be.

The overall method for decreasing change resistance and making some people willing is having a proper dialogue. There’s the narrative, but you should listen to what they say and offer support through training, resources, and mentorship to help people adapt. You should also point out what the others can do and how they can effectively work after the change. If people take anonymous jabs, you must foster psychological safety by addressing the negativity directly but diplomatically. Effective communication is key in managing change resistance.

As a great architect, it’s crucial to empathize with the human side of change and approach resistance with compassion and curiosity. Change resistance is not something to be crushed or defeated but studied analytically and navigated. While you, as an architect, are rarely alone responsible for managing change resistance, you should definitely do your part in attempting to transform resistance into collaboration. You can start with a simple, empathetic statement: “Hey, I understand that you have reservations about this. Please tell me more.”

If that doesn’t work, you must analyze whether you need everyone for the change or realistically have enough support. Most often, the change you drive doesn’t require everyone’s efforts. What do you do instead of working with people who are willing? While it’s hard to let go of the idea that some may still oppose your grand ideas, that may be what you must do.

A small core group representing all the required stakeholder groups will do the work for you. You will solve the problems with them. For those who are absolutely against changes, you show them a new way to keep doing their part without the extra tax, and they will usually adapt. That’s the best you can do if you can’t persuade everyone. You must learn to live with what feels like a partial failure.

As an architect, you must interact with most of the stakeholder groups related to your IT projects. You are in a unique position to sense change resistance. The most dangerous forms of it are passive and quiet, not active and vocal. You should work with your stakeholder groups to transform the change resistance into cooperation. If that doesn’t succeed, you have to look at the project’s viability and choose to work with what you have. While you may not decide how to proceed, your input counts.