Given that the pace of change is ever increasing, here are some thoughts about the nature of resistance to change.

Wherever you work, whatever you do, you're undoubtedly involved in change - initiating it, promoting it, managing it or just on the receiving end of it. One of our guiding principles about organisational change is that "organisations don't change; people do". Whatever your experience of change you'll noticed that any change will stimulate a degree of resistance.

Ed Nevis is a consultant who became a therapist and has worked extensively in the arena of organisational and personal change. These are some of his ideas on resistance.

Managing change involves the management of multiple realities.

People may be in the same physical setting at the same time, but their experience may be different

The world view of those driving the change may be different from that of the targets of change

Differences in reality are often seen by drivers of change as resistance. Drivers see their own reality as the "best" or "desired" state of affairs. "Resisters" are seen as deviant and / or unmotivated.

A different and more helpful definition of resistance may be to view it as the existence of multi-directional energies - multiple forces or desires, not all of which support each other, and many of which pull in different directions

Perhaps resistance is the first reaction to the change, not the last.

Guidelines for working with resitance.

View resistance as something of interest and of potential value

See it as a manifestation of an individual's interest and energy

Become curious - how is it that others see things differently than I do? How is it that some people do not accept an apparently desirable goal or procedure?

Nevis' second law of change: All resistance is composed of ambivalence - leave room for the positive to rise. It can help if you make room for inputs from the resisters in shaping the design and implementation of the change

Accept the fact that you can never get an articulation of all the various realities that individuals will hold in any given change effort. Do the best you can to get them out, and use means of influence that can shape a new reality for people. Different leverage points are required to deal with different objections or resistance.

Edwin C. Nevis

Organisational Consulting; A Gestalt Approach: Gardner Press Inc. 1987.

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