PART II

Change Challenges

Now that we have revealed the Superpowers of a Change Agent we have to identify and respond to the challenges they are going to face in the workplace. As Arnold Bennett says, all changes will also bring drawbacks or challenges. This part of the book will examine the individual’s responses to change, examine how different personalities need to be managed in the change environment and highlight the role culture, values and leadership will play. Finally, we will look at the nemesis of the Change Superhero, the Culture Challenger, and look at how to ensure that change triumphs.

It is commonly stated that 70% of change initiatives fail and the cause is almost always considered to be people-related. What do we really mean by people-related? After all, most people don’t come to work planning to be difficult or resistant. When we look more closely at why business change fails, there is rarely one outright change saboteur, but it is more about individual differences or cultural norms that make us fearful about change or reinforce the status quo.

This part of the book explores how we naturally respond to change in terms of both personality and emotion. We also consider the power of organizational culture, sometimes defined as ‘how we do things around here’. After all, what is culture if it isn’t the way groups of people operate in a habitual way, usually influenced by the environment? The challenge that this poses for our Change Superheroes is that sustainable change involves influencing both individuals and groups. We may start with just one person, but ultimately we need to encourage most people to behave in a way that may not match their personality or the environment. It is going to feel unfamiliar and perhaps uncomfortable, which means there will be significant pressure to backslide. It’s like starting a new healthy eating plan but leaving all the crisps and chocolates around, providing ongoing temptation and a reminder of old eating habits.

So, for us to make lasting change, we need to be prepared to take on existing Cultural Challenges that are tempting us to behave in the old way. We need to understand how individual preferences and natural reactions to change can result in us being confronted by strange emotions, unpredictable behaviours or seemingly illogical conflicts, which might be draining and demoralizing.

The purpose of this part of the book is to point out that these human and cultural reactions to change are entirely predictable. By exposing these recognizable patterns of behaviour, it is far easier for us to consider how to counter them or – better still – use them to our advantage. This part identifies a number of predictable Change Challenges, helps us to understand their likely causes and shares tools and techniques in the following chapters that we can use to counter them.