Close
X

Get in touch

Chapter 3 – Resistance management

3.4. Resistance management

The reality is that resistance emerges during any effort in which people must change the way they do their work.  Resistors can emerge at any level of the organisation – from the senior leadership level to middle managers and frontline employees. It arises primarily due to fear of the unknown and/or a reluctance to change.

Resistance management helps to systematically address these concerns by identifying points of resistance and types of resistors and developing strategies to address concerns.   Resistance management activities can be:

  • Preventative: for example sponsorship, engagement and communication plans as outlined above and embedding change management best practices and knowledgeable change professionals/practitioners.
  • Proactive: identifying likely audiences or individuals that may feel negatively impacted by the change and implement proactive measures to increase engagement and address concerns
  • Reactive: responding to resistance as they arise.

3.4.1. Resistance management – the process

1. Identify areas of likely resistance

  1. Review the following documents:
    • Stakeholder management plan
    • Change impact assessment and report
    • Change readiness assessment 
  2. Consult with your project team and/or peers to discuss the findings and gain insights into:
    • what potential or occurring resistance currently exists from stakeholders
    • how change has been managed in the past to anticipate the level of resistance and how the change will be received.

2. Develop resistance management strategies

  1. Analyse the details of the change landscape from previously gathered documents to better support the development of your projects’ resistance management plan
  2. Determine what approach to use based on the type of resistance pockets foreseen or observed. The resistance management plan template below provides typical approaches to resistance management
  3. Determine which approach or groups of approaches are most appropriate to your project and audience.

3. Manage, monitor and track

  1. Continually monitor and track resistance using one or more of the following channels:
    • Follow-up meetings with impacted groups to address specific issues
    • Focus group sessions to gather insight
    • One-on-one coaching with individual stakeholders
    • Use of the change agent network to both gather insight and share best practice
    • Knowledge transfer sessions to build confidence and capability
    • Project meetings
    • Sponsor roadmap meetings
  2. Document or log the resistance including resistor, type of resistance, owner to address resistance and mitigating strategy used to address (see resistance log template below)
  3. Continue to monitor resistance and where applicable escalate for issues to be resolved
  4. Discuss or report on resistance and how it is being managed with the project team and sponsor.

1.Review the examples.

2.Use the template as a guide

3.Develop resistance management plan

Next: