“We have a job to do and this change is getting in the way.”

“We don’t have time for this right now because we have bigger things on our plate to tackle — revenues are down and we need to just focus on sales.”

“We could do this, but it is going to cost you because we are not going to have time to … ”

All of these common responses that you hear during organizational change could be considered “diversionary” tactics to some degree. When you hear these kinds of responses, what is really going on? I would suggest two possibilities to consider.

The first possibility is that you have effectively built the case for change, communicating the benefits and urgency, but that some members of your organization are simply expressing these kinds of responses to stall or resist the change, or perhaps just can’t quite see how they can reorganize their time and energy to get there. Your management team should be able to sit down personally with individuals or groups that express these kinds of responses and walk through the benefits and clearly demonstrate the value of applying effort to this change. So, in this situation, this response may just have roots in the “fear of the unknown” or “sense of loss” we discussed in an earlier post (see The Primal Resistance to Change – Part 1) and you can help them gain closure and assuage their fears by demonstrating the positive outcome of this change.

The second possibility is that you have made a serious misstep in the change process which has left individuals or groups truly not feeling the urgency and/or benefits of the changes you are asking them to implement. Some common mistakes that I have seen include:

  • Your process may have been too “top down” and this may represent a lack of engagement with front-line managers (resulting in lack of good communication and driving sense of urgency)
  • Lack of alignment between leadership “wins” and group/individual “wins” (meaning, management is wanting a change to drive a benefit for the organization and does not quite equal the same win for a group or individual — change benefits one unequally — this is just      harder to manage but sometimes necessary)
  • Poorly planned change process (meaning, asking individuals or groups to change too much at one time – some larger projects require more of an “incremental” process to legitimately allow productive transition and no disruption of true value)
  • True lack of benefit (misjudgment of the value of the change and the response is accurate – you may need to sit down with individuals and/or groups and truly investigate the perceived and real benefits of the changes)

The real message is that when you hear these types of “diversionary” resistors to change, step back and truly consider the source, your processes, and determine whether you should just “push” those through the process, re-engage with the organization to create urgency and show benefit, or whether you need to correct a misstep in your process. These comments are red flags that should give you pause and assist you in ensuring you are working effectively towards change.