Episode #308: Anticipating Trouble Before Activating Change Engagement

Change is glacial in Japan. Everyone complains about everything but no one wants to change anything if it impacts them. We call this the NIMBY Protocol. Not In My Back Yard sums up this philosophy toward change. This company should change what it is doing, my boss should change, my colleagues should change, but I want to stay exactly the same. It would be good if everyone got behind the changes with full enthusiasm and cooperation. However, that is rarely the case. Caroline Schoeder’s advice is salutary, especially for Japan. “Some people change when they see he light, others when they feel the heat”.

“Forewarned is forearmed” is ancient wisdom, so if we are contemplating change, what are some of the roadblocks we can anticipate? If we know what is coming down the pike, we will be better able to me deal with it. In this week’s episode we will look at the blocker issues and next week we will look at how to make change engagement work.

Here are five aspects of trouble we should prepare for, anytime we get religion, go crazy and decide want to start a change process.

1. Can’t break down resistance

Change represents an assault on the established order. People who have accrued perks and power suddenly anticipate all of this hard earned advantage being stripped away from them. They might have built a little empire inside the organisation and this is about to come crashing down. There are always winners and losers in change. Because it is an alteration to the established order, by definition, the losers will always outnumber the winners. Resistance to change in Japan can be open but more often than not it is hidden. Telling the boss or the system they are wrong is dangerous. Saying you are not going to follow orders is a bold statement not too many staff want to be make in Japan or anywhere. So resistance moves underground and can be hard to ferret out.

2. Failing to gain buy in

Many organisations are regularly introducing changes and staff can suffer from “change fatigue”. The “here we go again” skepticism is especially prominent in staff who work for multinational companies in Japan. The ability of the organisation to drive change can also be in question. The “seen it all before” philosophy of doubt can sponsor a “wait and see” attitude. Often the changes are incremental and each step relies on the previous step to move the whole process along. When there is a stall because people have not bought into the change, it can derail the whole effort. Just telling people to accept change won’t provide enough muscle to get it done. We need to get the team to embrace change, support it and champion it. That is a lot easier said than done.

3. Cannot minimise anxiety

Humans tend to fear loss more strongly than they get excited about gain. The change envisaged is to usher in a new era of improved performance for the organization. Not everyone sees it that way. Our survival instinct kicks into gear and we start identifying the risks, the downside, the negative. Because we fear losing what we already have, in exchange for something we don’t yet have, we can become anxious about the change. Anxious people don’t become champions of change. They join the subterranean resistance to try and derail change, divert it or slow it down.

4. Failing to gain cooperation

Change in organisations can trigger the “everyman for himself “attitude as people hunker down to protect their personal guarded interests. One of the first casualties of change is internal cooperation. The silo effect between divisions in organisations is always prominent anyway. It can be blown up into large proportions by change. There is constant jockeying for positions, titles and influence by ambitious politicians inside firms. Protecting turf and gaining turf become their focus. There is little thought of what the impact all this might have on the change process and its capacity to succeed. “Not my monkeys, not my circus” being the prevailing ideology.

5. Cannot establish correct priorities

People are told the existing, well established priorities are now out. Up to this point it has probably taken an enormous commitment and effort to educate everyone on what the priorities are and to get people functioning accordingly. Change means by definition we have to start again and rebuild the priority alignment internally around the changes. How well are we able to explain the new priorities? The Executive Suite may get it, because they are driving the change, but what about the people down at the bottom of the totem pole. In normal times it is hard enough to get middle management to communicate the why sufficiently well, to get everyone behind the cause. Understanding the why makes following the priorities much easier, but are middle managers doing a good enough job in communicating the why of the new changes? Just telling people to change as an order only gets the minimum of compliance.

Change is diabolically hard in Japan. Resisters are like guerilla bands roaming the hallways trying to subverted the changes. Nothing is what it seems, so it is hard to get a read on how people are embracing the change. When making changes look for these five hurdles as they emerge and take action to smash them when they arise. If you don’t, you will have a two tiered organisation. The top thinks the changes are being taken up and the bottom are resisting, slowing things down and often sabotaging the project.