Chapter 9 Getting Back on Track 159

different issue—minimized in some ways. I absolutely believe that the whole focus on resistance to change is just a by-product of very bad change processes. The resistance we are experiencing in organizations says nothing about human nature or our innate ability to deal with change in a changing world.

RM: What is resistance in your view?

MW: Resistance is people’s assertion of their identity as they presently construct it.

RM: So if current change processes threaten that identity, how should we view change?

MW: The world is self-organizing. Everywhere we look, we see change going on—change, growth and development, and increasing complex- ity. All of these things are evident everywhere and they are evident in our own lives. Then we get into organizations in which change becomes not an ability, but just a huge problem for us. I think we need to stop looking at human nature negatively and look at our change processes with much more discernment. We do have a self-organizing capacity

in us, which means that we will change in order to maintain ourselves. Change is not foreign. In the natural world change is not a singular event you try to live through, it’s just the way things are. I think the saying “People don’t resist change, they resist being changed” sumsit up.

RM: What are the implications if people don’t resist change itself, but only resist being changed?

MW: A person in one organization said resistance to change is likea mantra we feed ourselves: “In every team meeting we get together and spend the first twenty minutes saying change is hard. Peopleresist change.” This is an unexamined belief about human nature. Our assumptions about stability and the promises of equilibrium were all false promises and that is not how life is. If people participate from the beginning of the change they are able to re-identify or change theiridentity so that it doesn’t feel threatening.