IMA's Implementing Organizational Changes at Speed Blog

If you are a Change Agent who is staying awake nights worrying about how you are going to eliminate resistance to change in your organization, here's some simple advice.  Go back to sleep!

Seriously, you will never combat or overcome resistance to change.  Sure it's frustrating, especially when you think your change will make things better for the people who are affected by the change.  But the truth is that what's positive to you or your senior leaders may not be so positive to the Targets of the change. From their "Frame of Reference," the change may create a lot of uncertainty and disruption. 

The terms "transformational change" and "transformation" may be two of the most over-used words in business today.  In our change management consulting work, we identify three different types of strategic change: 

If your organization is embarking on enterprise-wide change be aware that your organizational structure has a major impact on Sponsorship.  

Over the course of the past 25 years our change management consulting work has exposed us to a lot of misconceptions about what works and what doesn't work when it comes to implementing projects. We recently shared these 4 myths at the HIMSS (Health Information Management Systems Society) International Conference and found that the myths are alive and well in the world of Healthcare IT project implementations.  

Some organizational changes are compliance-driven; some are commitment driven; some have elements of both. Each approach has predictable outcomes, upsides, and downsides. One of the values of having a change management methodology that is tactical and operational is that you get guidance on how you need to implement differently, depending on the nature of your change. 

One of the most common questions we get about our AIM change management methodology (also known as the Accelerating Implementation Methodology) is both simple and complex. The question is, "What is the best way to get a change management methodology introduced into our organization?"  

While a practical change management methodology like the Accelerating Implementation Methodology (AIM) can be useful in managing resistance to change, no methodology will eliminate resistance.  

Resistance to change is inevitable, and it is not logical (remember that resistance is a function of the degree of disruption the change represents, from the Frame of Reference of the Targets.)  So you will never communicate your way out of resistance or get adoption of changes by presenting arguments explaining the rationale of your change, especially from the 1,000 foot corporate level. 

One of the biggest aha's from our change management consulting work with leaders of transformational change is that there are certain tasks that only they can carry out. While it may be common practice for these leaders to delegate implementation responsibility, the fact is that there are six essential tasks that can't be delegated to Change Agents. 

What's the difference between a Change Agent and a Change Champion? The AIM Change Management Methodology describes the roles like this in our CAST of Characters (Champions, Agents, Sponsors, and Targets): 

If you are seeking transformational change, you will need a change management methodology that unifies the organization with one approach, one vocabulary, and one set of tools.  While leaders may resist the need to invest, you just can't overcome the cultural barriers to transformational change that most organizations face: