Is It Hard, or Is It New?

“Is it hard, or is it new?”

One of the directors asked this after another director described how challenging the switch to a new payroll system had been.

It was the second time that week I found myself thinking about how much change, whether good, bad or somewhere in between, can affect an organization, and how the way we approach that change can, well, change the experience of it.

So it’s worth asking two things: Why do people resist change? And what can help?

Why We Resist Change

We want to be the authors of our own lives.

One of the most important lessons from my mediation training (I’m certified in four different types, each slightly different in meaningful ways) is that no matter the conflict, people are always more bought into a solution they had a hand in shaping. That holds even when the solution asks them to compromise or give up something they thought was one of their non-negotiables.

This apparently has a name: the IKEA effect. When I first read about it, I assumed it referred to what happens to happily married couples after they try to put something together from the store. (Spoiler: the furniture doesn’t end up together, and neither does the marriage.)

Instead, the IKEA effect describes how people tend to place greater value on things they've helped create or assemble. The same is true of change. A new process you had a chance to give feedback on, help build, or try out first lands very differently than one handed to you as mandatory.

Organizational change is obviously more complicated than building a bookshelf, but the underlying idea about participation is interesting. Human beings have a deeply rooted need for autonomy. We want to feel that we are the authors of our own lives. Forced change often triggers what psychologists call reactance: a defensive reaction where people resist, or even break rules, simply to reassert their freedom.

Change that people help shape preserves that autonomy. And, because they had a hand in it, it doesn’t feel like something being done to them by an outside force.

Autonomy is one reason people fight change they didn’t ask for, but it’s not the only one.

Fair: the other four-letter word.

In mediation, we call “fair” the “other four-letter word.” Everyone’s sense of fairness is like a snowflake: I’d be shocked if you found two that were identical.

What reliably shapes it is the process. If people feel their voice was heard, their input was considered, and the process was transparent, they see the change itself as more fair. Research shows that people are far more willing to accept, and stick with, even unfavorable outcomes when they believe the process behind them was fair.

Not knowing is worse than bad news.

Trust me on this one. A team that knows exactly what’s changing, and when, can plan around it. A team left to guess fills the silence with worst-case scenarios.

And when the change touches something as personal as a paycheck, that guessing gets loud fast.

All change implies grief.

One of the most profound things I’ve ever heard about change came from Dossier Harps at LifeLabs Learning, who taught me to look at change through the lens of loss. Embracing a new thing can also mean mourning the old one.

That’s true even when the change is good news. You can be excited about a promotion and still miss your old team. You can look forward to new technology and still mourn the manual process you used for years.

It’s particularly true when we change systems people have spent years mastering. We like what we know, especially when we’ve gotten really good at it. A new system means going back to being a beginner at something we used to do with our eyes closed.

Change Happens

Now, it's obviously not realistic to give everyone a vote on every organizational change.

Take the payroll system. Do we want all 573 of our employees weighing in on ADP versus Toast? No. Someone has to evaluate the options, understand the financial and operational implications, and make a decision. But making a decision and deciding how it gets implemented are two different things. People may have no say in the first and still have real influence over the second. They don’t have to choose the change to have ownership in making it work.

Here’s where to give them that voice, and what helps them through it.

Ask the people closest to the work how it should roll out. I’ve heard some version of “If they’d just asked the operations team before rolling this out, I could have told them that wouldn’t work” more times than I can count.

Let’s look at onboarding employees onto a new payroll system as an example. Not everyone has a computer at home, and for some employees, English isn’t their first language. The operations team suggested holding “office hours” with laptops and a translator available. The recommendation was adopted, and the team was much more satisfied with the rollout. They spotted a real problem, helped solve it, and saw their input put into practice.

One caveat: the invitation has to be real. Pretending something is open for discussion when it isn’t is one of the fastest ways to erode trust.

Tell them what you know, and what you don’t. If you don’t have the answer yet, say so plainly: “Here’s what’s decided, and here’s what isn’t yet.” Don’t pretend you have a clearer picture than you do.

Explain the why and the why now. “Here’s what’s changing” is only part of the message. “Here’s WHY it matters, and why it’s happening now” shows your intention and gives people something they can actually work with. The why and the why now are just as important as the what.

Let the old way have been worth something. This is the one people skip most. When you introduce a new system, it can feel like you’re asking people to admit the old way, the one they were good at, was wrong or a waste. It wasn’t. Name that explicitly: “This isn’t a referendum on how you used to do it. That got us here. This gets us to the next thing.” It goes a long way, even when people can’t put into words that this is what they were feeling.

So, Is It Hard, Or Is It New?

Ashley, the genius who inspired this whole newsletter with one question: I think the answer is both! Change is hard because it’s new. And because we don’t always acknowledge that. Anyone who has ever had a software update on their phone happen overnight and woken up to a new operating system knows this feeling. (The old one was just fine! Why did they have to do this? Why now!?)

I’ll be honest with you: I don’t like change in my own life either. But the truth is that I’m great at helping leadership teams and organizations manage their change (physician, heal thyself!).

So if your team is navigating a change and having trouble figuring out what’s making it so hard, give ya girl a call!