Why People Resist Digital Changes & How to Help Them Adapt
Even though you might be excited to drive digital transformation within your organization, you'll likely encounter folks that do not share the same level of excitement. Let's discuss why people resist changes and how to help them adapt.
Each person has their own reasons for why they're hesitant or resistant to change, although it's typically one or more of these:
Comfort with an existing process that may feel familiar or efficient, even if the latter is not relatively true
Anxiety to learn new things related to a perception of their own capacity or how they will be perceived by peers
Fear of losing job security based on how the change impacts their worth or necessity to your organization
Past negative experiences from changes within your organization, their prior roles, or even personal life
When you're rolling out a change, you'll want to look for these telltale signs that resistance is brewing within a person or entire team:
Delayed adoption that persists and has attribution to different reasons when prompted (e.g. too busy, needed to put out a fire, etc)
Finding workarounds to the changes to business process or systems, which could look like delegation to other people or teams, or continuing to operate in the prior state
Complaints about minor issues that are not blockers in reality, although are positioned as such
Without diving into details about change management frameworks, here are a handful of practical ways to help the hesitant and resistant folks adapt:
Lead with empathy by recognizing their position and how the change impacts them
Provide contextual training around how their role or function shifts, which may include a "before and after" style approach to demonstrate how to fulfill their responsibilities
Identify supportive peers that can reinforce the why and how associated with the change (while still being empathetic)
Create a place to practice to mitigate concerns that failing to fully adopt the change will impact their performance or other stakeholders
Provide meaningful recognition that aligns with how they like to receive feedback, which may either be direct or in a shared space like a team meeting or Slack channel
TLDR: Identify resistance by watching for telltale signs, determine the root cause, and use targeted support to help them adapt before forcing adoption.
