Leadership and Workforce Alignment & Engagement Session 7: Overcoming Resistance to Change-Disagreement on the Negative Implications 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. To become a high-performing organization, we need alignment and engagement within the organization, which is a necessary condition for achieving high performance. Without alignment and engagement, reaching high performance is unlikely.

Continuing with the series on resistance to change, today we’ll focus on overcoming layer four resistance, which involves disagreement on the negative ramifications of a solution. When proposing a solution, others may see potential negative consequences in different areas or departments of the organization. To have a complete solution, we must address these negative ramifications along with solving the initial problem.

To recap, 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 of a solution.
Layer five: Disagreement on the details of implementation.
Layer six: Disagreement on the risk.
Today, we’ll focus on layer four, which we refer to as ‘negative ramifications.’ When presenting a solution, we often encounter responses like ‘yes, but,’ where people partially agree with the idea but express concerns about potential negative consequences in other areas of the organization. To address this, we use the Socratic method to better understand and validate these concerns.

The Socratic method is a cooperative argument or dialogue based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and draw out ideas. When faced with negative branches or concerns, we must avoid dismissing them as invalid. Instead, we need to investigate further to uncover any false assumptions or misunderstandings that might be driving these concerns.

By understanding the root cause of the negative consequences, we can neutralize or minimize them through further analysis and brainstorming of mitigating strategies. This process strengthens the proposed solution and prevents unforeseen negative side effects.

To overcome layer four resistance, we need to:

Clearly state the negative effect that arises from the proposed solution.
Challenge the assumptions and validity of the reservations.
Seek supporting evidence to gather all relevant facts about the negative consequences.
Reevaluate assumptions and either invalidate or recalibrate them if necessary.
Brainstorm mitigating strategies to address the negative ramifications.
Verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed solutions.
Select the best solutions that have no negative consequences.
Update the future reality tree with the proposed solutions.
Validate and implement the proposed solutions.
By systematically addressing negative branch reservations, we enhance decision-making and increase the chances of successful implementation for proposed solutions to complex problems.

That concludes our session for today. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, visit our website, or check out our YouTube channel for more videos on becoming a high-performing organization.