Leadership and Workforce Alignment & Engagement Session 5: Overcoming Resistance to Change-Disagreement on the Direction of the Solution | Operational Excellence Quick Hits

In today’s session, we’re going to continue the series on leadership and workforce alignment and engagement. Achieving alignment and engagement throughout the organization is a necessary condition for a high performing organization. Without that alignment and engagement, reaching high performance is unlikely.

Today, we’ll focus on overcoming resistance to change, specifically layer two resistance, which is disagreeing on the direction of the solution. In the previous two sessions, we discussed layer zero (why change?) and layer one (disagreement on the problem) along with techniques to overcome those layers. Now, we’ll delve into layer two and explore the remaining layers of disagreement on the details of the solution, disagreement on the negative ramifications, disagreement on the details of the implementation, and disagreement on the risks.

The technique we use to address layer two resistance is the generic cloud. This technique helps us understand conflicts within the organization. It starts with an objective driven by a need and the corresponding action taken to satisfy that need. Often, there are conflicting actions related to different needs. The generic cloud helps us identify assumptions about why certain actions satisfy specific needs and challenges those assumptions to resolve the core conflict.

When dealing with disagreement on the direction of the solution, we need to surface the assumptions underlying each need, challenge any erroneous assumptions, and find an injection that breaks the core conflict. Breaking the core conflict involves finding a solution that allows us to satisfy both needs simultaneously—a win-win solution.

To resolve the core conflict, we use the future reality tree. This tree incorporates the injection that breaks the conflict and addresses any negative loops present in the current reality tree. It describes the cause-and-effect relationship, explaining how the injection transforms undesirable effects into desirable ones.

For example, in our previous session, we identified the core conflict related to increasing work in process and its negative effects. The injection to resolve this conflict was choking the release of work into the production system based on reliable production lead time and creating pull. Implementing this injection led to a reduction in work in process, improved lead time, due date performance, quality, and cash position.

By focusing on identifying the core problem, challenging assumptions, and finding win-win solutions, we can overcome layer two resistance and pave the way for achieving breakthrough improvement.

That concludes our session for today. Feel free to visit our website, connect with me on LinkedIn, and explore our YouTube channel for more videos on techniques to become a high-performing organization.