Cost of resistance. Before we get into a discussion about why people resist and what we can do about it, we really need to come to an understanding of what change resistance costs the organization, not only in delays, but also possible failure of the change initiative itself. Once we understand the magnitude of the cost, then we have a better understanding of how much we can afford to invest in preventing resistance. Paper exercise, I would like you to take out some paper and reflect on your past experience. Jot down a change initiative, where you have observed resistance, think about what happened and why it happened. What were the symptoms of that resistance?

How did you know that People were resisting. What were they doing that displayed resistance not only in what they were saying, but what they were doing. And what was the reasons behind that resistance? Think about these. Why have people resisted in the past? What have you personally observed?

And what did you learn from your observations of how people resisted in the past? And then let's talk about the change resistance itself. What did the leadership team do to address the problem of resistance and were they successful? Think about this. It will lay the foundation as we go through the next series of videos. Now, let's shift to a change that you are considering yourself.

What would you like to implement And what would it delay cost you, if you could not get it done by when you desire? What does each month of delay cost the organization, indirect monetary losses, as well as lost opportunities, something, something that you would like to do, but haven't been able to do because of the delays and the resistance, possibly low productivity. If you need to increase productivity be competitive. What is that delay costing you and the employee time? This change effort any change effort requires additional work until it becomes routine and big in the habits of the organization that takes additional employee time that could be otherwise used more productively, maybe, but we still need to Get through the change initiative. And what is it costing you and the management team in your time to deal with resistance, we oftentimes think about the time it takes to develop and implement a change.

We don't often factor in the extra time for dealing with the resistance that will come from a poorly designed change plan. The larger question then comes is to what extent does your cost estimates make some assumptions? The recipients are often throwing up what we believe to be unrealistic obstacles, but are they? Are we making assumptions about how people think about what we are proposing, and how we're proposing to get it done? And the change managers themselves are we doing do the right things to streamline the change process? Or are we creating barriers to the change with what we are trying to do and the way we're doing it.

This is a change agent centric point of view. Too often, we use a change agent, ourselves centric and that we think about resistance and the cost to us and the organization from our perspective, we do not turn this around and think about change from the people being impacted. From this observation, though, we need to look at multiple perspectives. And that is one thing we're going to be doing repeatedly throughout the series of videos, looking at change not only from our point of view, but the point of view from the people being impacted. Change resistance cost. How much is the resistance costing you and your organization?