The Impact of Personal Factors on Resistance to Change

In the same article on resistance cited in the previous post, the Prosci author writes:

"... on top of the emotional reactions to change, resistance has other influencing factors, not the least of which is an employee’s personal situation. This includes all aspects of a person’s life including family status, mobility (are they in a position to be flexible in terms of where they live?), financial security, age, health, career aspirations (are they where they expected to be at this point in their life?), relationships at home and at work, educational background, upcoming personal events and past success in this work environment (promotions, recognition, compensation). For example, a person’s financial situation or health may cause them to make choices related to a change that on the surface do not appear logical, but when understood make perfect sense. Similarly, a change in a person’s relationship with a spouse or significant other can cause a fundamental shift in what is important to that person."

Gee, really? Who would have thunk it. (Pardon my sarcasm.) Is this statement true? Absolutely. In fact, it is a no-brainer. Nobody needs certification in CM to know this intrinsically. There is not an organization in the western world where assessing individual personal factors would be an appropriate or realistic part of planning a CM program. The privacy concerns are too strong, the complexities are too great, and the shifts in personal factors over short time periods too numerous.

The best policy here is for change leaders to openly recognize and state this fact up-front; that there are scores of factors a CM program just cannot (and likely should not) take into consideration or plan for except in a generic, collective way.

Could a change leader attempt to survey eployees on such personal factors? Sure, but what would the cost-benefit be? What % of employees would actually respond? Of that %, what subset would respond with the whole-hearted truth? Would the questions be seen as completely inappropriate, a total invasion of privacy, and possibly against the law? You bet.