How people react to change, and how to encourage commitment to change.
Reactions to change
People respond in different ways to change and a variety of behaviours might be observed:
Resistance
If people perceive the change as a threat they my respond with behaviours or emotions designed to impede the change
Apathy
A feeling and or display of lack of interest in the change
Compliance
Public display of unity but privately disagreeing with the concept
Conformance
A change of behaviour influenced by real or imagined group pressure
Commitment
Engaged emotionally or intellectually with the change
Getting commitment to change
Improvement teams should be mindful of the mindsets or beliefs of the people who work in the system or who may be affected by changes to the system.
To create sustained change and improvement, improvement teams need to think of changes that make it easy for people to apply the new changes and hard to resort to the old way of doing things.
Before implementation is started, improvement teams and organisations should consider ways in which they will encourage people affected by the change to engage.
Much of what is discussed in Creating Conditionsis equally applicable at this stage of the improvement Journey.
