Leadership and Workforce Alignment & Engagement Session 4: Overcoming Resistance to Change-Disagreement on the Problem | Operational Excellence Quick Hits

Quick Hits share weekly tips and techniques on topics related to Operational Excellence. This week’s theme relates to overcoming resistance to change. We hope you enjoy the information presented!

In today’s session, we’re going to continue the series on leadership and workforce alignment and engagement. Engagement and alignment are necessary conditions for becoming a high-performing organization. This session will focus on overcoming resistance to change, specifically layer one resistance, which is disagreement on the problem.

In the last session, we discussed layer zero, which is the question of ‘why change?’ Today, we’ll address the challenge of acknowledging that there is a problem, but not agreeing on what that problem is. Our layers of resistance are as follows:

Layer zero: Why change?
Layer one: Disagreement on the problem.
Layer two: Disagreement on the direction of the solution.
Layer three: Disagreement on the details of the solution.
Layer four: Disagreement on the negative ramifications.
Layer five: Disagreement on the details of the implementation.
Layer six: Disagreement on the risks or unverbalized fear.
In these sessions, we’ll explore each layer and discuss techniques to overcome them. We’ll focus on achieving alignment and agreement to facilitate breakthrough improvement.

To be effective problem solvers, we must excel in cause and effect thinking. This means understanding the actions that cause effects and identifying root causes for problems. The technique we’ll use is the current reality tree, which demonstrates the interrelationships of problems within each functional area. It helps us work backward from effects to identify initiating causes and core conflicts.

The current reality tree allows us to identify the connections between symptoms (the effects) and root causes (the core conflicts or root cause problems). By prioritizing and tackling core problems, multiple undesirable effects can be eliminated, leading to positive, systematic changes.

For example, one of the conditions causing many undesirable effects is the constant striving to reduce waste. This leads to highly efficient processes, pressure on resource utilization, and minimizing setups. However, these actions may lead to undesirable effects such as increased work in process and quality issues. To address these effects, we must work back to the root cause and break the core conflict.

The current reality tree is a powerful technique to gain agreement on the problem, thereby overcoming layer one of resistance. It opens the door for identifying leverage points and achieving breakthrough improvements.

That concludes our session for today. Thank you for joining. Connect with me on LinkedIn, visit our website, and check out our YouTube channel for more videos on creating high-performing organizations and achieving breakthrough improvement.