Resistance to Change: 01 - Why it (r)exists?

Resistance to change, you face it when you try to change:

• the position of the dinner table in the living room;
• someone's opinion;
• a team's process;
• a company culture;
• ...

Considering only Agile adoption/transformation contexts, according to the latest State of Scrum 2017-2018 (Scrum Alliance) and the 12th Annual State of Agile Report (CollabNet/VersionOne), resistance to change is at the top 2 challenges:

So what causes this resistance? Most importantly, why do people resist change? Fear of change is not a valid reason on its own, especially because it does not help to understand or deal with it.

In this series of posts, I'll shed some light on why, how and what you could do regarding resistance to change. I’ll also share a view on its origin and some tips and techniques to deal with it.

This first post, will base my arguments on neuroscience, psychology and something that you can literally feel, because it affects us all and is scientifically proven: Inertia.

Let's get physical, physical!

In the First Law of Motion, Isaac (not Olivia) Newton states that inertia is the resistance of any physical object to any change in its position and state of motion. This includes changes to the speed of the object, direction, or state of rest. The bigger the mass the bigger the inertia.

This is easy to understand if we look at the example of the table in the living room, but what about someone’s opinion? Well, we are also physical objects so, it's not that different.

Your own lens to the world!

Regarding opinions, every stimulus that we receive from the outside world, be it an image, sound, smell, taste, touch, or any piece of information, is processed using a filter, which makes us see the world not as it is, but as we see it, filtered.

This filter is unique for each one of us, there are no equal filters. It's responsible for creating your subjective reality, which is different from the objective reality.

Subjective reality is open to greater interpretation based on personal feeling, emotion, aesthetics, etc. One might like or dislike strawberry cake and people could have a passionate argument about it.

Objective reality is not influenced by emotions, opinions, or personal feelings - it's a perspective based in fact, in things quantifiable and measurable. In the image above, no matter the opinion or perspective, there are 4 fruits on the plate and nobody (in their right mind) could dispute that.

And what our filter has to do with inertia?

Well, lets add some weight(s) to the topic!

Our filter is composed of different parts, which I’ll refer to them as weights. Depending on your filter, you have different weights, and you value them differently, giving more importance to some and less importance to others. The higher the importance of the weight, the bigger its mass.

In our brain, we attach one or more of those weights to our opinions, adding mass to those opinions.

We already know that the bigger the mass the bigger the inertia. If we adapt this, we'll have:

The bigger the mass added by those weights, the bigger the resistance of the opinion to change.

Some example of weights are:

  ? Our principles

  ? Our belief system

  ? Our experiences

  ? Our associations of pleasure/pain

  ? Our genetics

  ? Our fears

  ? Our emotions

  ? …

On the previous example, the boy will "weight" his opinion about strawberry cake differently if:

• He just doesn't like strawberry (taste)
• He is allergic to strawberries, but never had an allergic shock (fear)
• He is allergic to strawberries and already had an allergic shock (fears + experiences)
• He associates strawberry with an emotional bad experience in his life (experiences + emotions + fear)
• He never tasted strawberry, but someone important to him sad it was bad (relationships + emotions)
• ...

So I just need to push someone's opinion really hard to change it?

In theory: Yes. In practice: This won’t work.

Imagine your filter as the gatekeeper of our house. In this case, the house is your subjective reality. As a gatekeeper, it scans all opinions you receive and if it considers invalid, it closes the door, rejecting that opinion.

The more the rejected opinion tries to force the door, the more the filter pushes back.

Remember seeing a discussion where two people try endlessly to prove their own point of view?

They were just forcing their opinions/filters onto each other, which resulted in their filters being pushed back. Which made them push even stronger, and so on, leading to a fruitless discussion.

From the outside this is perceived as immature and stubborn and yet we (at least I sometimes) act the same when my filters are challenged.

But what if I push really hard, er... prove my argument right?

If we manage to do a gigantic push or find a gap in the other's filter logic, and the opinion is capable to force its entry, the house will enter self-preservation mode. It's like an emergency lock down. This is when we enter complete denial. You've probably seen this before...

Breaching our filter is like trying to destroy our house... our subjective reality. We will do everything we can to maintain its integrity and original shape.

What is our responsibility in all this?

Our subjective reality is a filtered version of the objective reality.

Taking into consideration the mass our weights add to our opinions and the filter defensive mechanism, we realize how simple it is to create resistance to change.

In the “table in the living room” example, the table was not “resisting” you before you tried to move it. Here is how it goes:

Table is “content” where it is. => You “resist” the table being there => You start “changing” the table => Table resists.

You resisted the table in the first place. You were the one that created resistance.

It does not matter if you are giving an opinion which you consider beneficial. The classification your filter gives to an opinion, may not be the same to someone else. Even if the opinion is the same, it will never have exactly the same weight.

Remember: this filter isn't there to help us change, it's there to keep us exactly the same.

This is not even a conscious process. It's the self-preservation of the filter.

Yeah, so now what?

Just like the oxygen mask procedure in airplanes, start with yourself: Comprehending, accepting and becoming aware of your own filter, it is the first step to learn what makes you go into self-preservation mode, rejecting other filters.

One simple tool that could help out "visualize your filter", would be to create your own Personal Map. I won't go into details here on how to do one (especially because the original link have an amazing video by its creator explaining it):

The next step is to be able to use this knowledge to reduce the resistance you create when facing someone else with another filter. On the next post, I will share some tips and tools on how to achieve that.

What is your opinion... er... your filter on this?

In the meantime, what composes your filter? Were you aware you had one? What triggers your self-preservation mode? Leave a comment below if your filter allows you to ;)

Also, once again amazing kudos to the great article reader/editor/challenger Robert Kalweit!