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OVERCOMING RESISTANCE TO CHANGE
Your business must change to survive. If you don't introduce new methods, procedures, and technology, you won't be able to stay ahead of your competition. You have to improve continuously or you'll be left behind. But your business can't improve continuously if your people resist change.
Is it natural and inevitable that your employees will resist change? It often seems that way. How many times have you tried to get your people to learn a new method for performing their work or to use a new technology, only to find that they grumbled and complained, were slow to learn, and reverted to the old method of doing things as soon as they thought you weren't watching? Why do we so often see this "stubborn," seemingly irrational resistance to almost anything new? Is the resistance we see really stubborn and irrational from our employees' point of view? Maybe, but maybe not. Consider how new technology (a new computer system, four example) impacts the workplace.
First, most of us immediately recognize that when we introduce new technology, people are going to have to learn new skills. They are going to have to attend some kind of training to learn how the technology works. Most of us also recognize that people respond differently to the prospect of training, ranging from anticipation to dread.
To a lesser extent, most of us recognize - sometimes only after the technology is installed - that administrative and operating procedures will have to be changed. Seldom are the design and operational requirements of new technology fully consistent with the
procedures we have followed in the past. The likelihood is that we will have to issue new administrative or procedural guidelines and people will have to adjust to a new way of doing business. The old way - what we knew by rote, what we followed by habit - isn't valid any more.
Beyond training and new procedures, often we give little further consideration to the implementation of new technology. Our entire plan for introducing new technology may boil down to just installation, training, issuing new procedures, and maybe doing some
follow-up and fine-tuning. Too often, we completely ignore other ways the workplace is affected. What other ways? Well, we think there are at least three.
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