Have you ever introduced a change that made perfect sense…

​

The problem was real, the data supported it, the new process was better.

​

And yet…Someone still pushed back.

​

Maybe they said, “That’s never going to work.” Maybe they avoided the change. Maybe they kept doing things the old way.

​

And we call it resistance to change.

​

But what if we're looking at resistance all wrong? What if people aren't actually resisting the change?

​

What if they're resisting the future they imagine will be true when the change is implemented?

​

In this episode of Thoughts on Change, we're going deeper into the psychology of resistance and exploring a hypothesis that could completely change how we think about buy-in.

​

What You'll Learn

In this episode, I explore:

• Why the same change can create completely different reactions in different people

• How our brains fill in the blanks when we're imagining an uncertain future

• What Daniel Gilbert's research on affective forecasting can teach us about resistance to change

• Why we often predict how a future change will make us feel—and why those predictions aren't always accurate

• Why more data and a stronger business case don't necessarily eliminate resistance

• How a perfectly good change can still feel threatening

• Why resistance can be valuable information about the future someone is imagining

• How to shift from trying to convince people to getting curious about the future they're seeing

 

What If People Aren't Resisting the Change?

When someone says, “We've tried that before,” or “That's never going to work,” it's easy to assume they're resisting the change itself.

​

But what if we asked a different question?

​

“What do they think their world is going to look like if this change actually happens?”

​

Because we don't all imagine the same future. You might look at automation and see less manual work, more consistency, and fewer headaches. Someone else might see their job disappearing, their skills becoming irrelevant, or increased monitoring.

 

Same change. Completely different imagined future.

​

And if you believe that future is coming, of course you're going to react to it.

 

Our Brains Fill In the Blanks

Every change has a future attached to it. And when we don't know exactly what that future will look like, our brains start filling in the blanks.

• What will my day look like?

• What will I be responsible for?

• Will I still be good at this?

• Will people still need me?

• Will I have any control?

• What happens if I can't figure it out?

• What happens if I fail?

 

We don't just respond to the change that's being proposed. We respond to the future we're imagining.

​

And that future can look very different depending on who's doing the imagining.

 

We Don't Just Imagine the Future. We Imagine How It Will Feel.

This is where the research gets really interesting.

​

Psychologists Timothy Wilson and Daniel Gilbert have studied something called affective forecasting—how we predict our emotional reactions to events that haven't happened yet.

​

And it turns out we're not always very good at it.

​

We tend to overestimate how intensely, and for how long, we're going to feel the emotions we associate with future events.

​

Think about what that means for change.

​

Someone hears: “We're going to automate this process.”

​

And their brain doesn't just imagine what will happen, it starts predicting:

• “I'm going to feel anxious.”

• “I'm going to feel incompetent.”

• “I'm going to feel like I don't have control.”

• “I'm going to hate this.”

 

Now they're reacting in the present to emotions they expect to experience in the future.

 

Even when that future hasn't happened yet, the feelings they're predicting can still influence what they do today.

​

This Is Why Data Doesn't Always Solve Resistance

This is where we can get ourselves into trouble as CI practitioners.

 

Someone pushes back, and we think: “They just don't have enough information.”

 

So we give them the data, the business case, ROI, the chart. And they still aren't convinced. So we give them more data.

​

But what if they're not actually questioning whether the change will work? What if they're worried about what it means for them?

​

Data might answer: “Will this work?”

But it doesn't necessarily answer: “What will my life be like if it works?”

​

And that may be the question they're actually trying to answer.

 

Even Good Change Can Feel Threatening

The change doesn't have to be bad for the future to feel threatening.

 

A process can be safer. A system can be more efficient. A technology can eliminate tedious work.

​

And people can still resist. Because people don't experience change as a spreadsheet.

 

They experience it as a future they're going to have to live in.

 

That future can bring uncertainty around:

• Status

• Competence

• Control

• Autonomy

 

The change may be objectively better. But the future they imagine may not feel better.

 

Resistance Is Information

What if, instead of seeing resistance as an obstacle to overcome, we saw it as information we need?

​

Resistance can give us clues about the future someone is imagining.

​

When someone says: “This is going to create more work.”

Maybe they're imagining a future where they're already overloaded and this change adds another responsibility.

​

The words they're saying are about the change, but the fear underneath them may be about the future.

​

The Question I Want You to Start Asking

So here's the shift I want you to experiment with.

The next time you encounter resistance, don't start with: “Why are they resisting?”

Start with: “What future are they resisting?”

• What do they think they're going to lose?

• What do they think is going to get harder?

• What are they afraid will happen?

• What are they uncertain about?

• What does this change mean for their role, their identity, their competence, their control, or their security?

 

And most importantly: What are they imagining that you aren't?

 

Because that question might tell you far more about the resistance than another PowerPoint ever will.

 

The Big Takeaway

Here's my hypothesis:

People don't actually resist change. They resist the future they imagine will be true when the change is implemented.

​

That doesn't mean every objection is fear. It doesn't mean every change is good. And it doesn't mean resistance is always irrational.

​

It means that when we encounter resistance, there's probably more happening beneath the surface than disagreement with the change itself.

 

Links

Video

C.H.A.N.G.E. Shaper

​

Transcript

Welcome back to Thoughts on Change. In the last episode, we talked about an idea that I think is really important for us continuous improvement practitioners. Our job isn't to force success. Our job is to make success easier. And we talked about four ways to do that: creating clarity about what good looks like, setting clear expectations around outcomes and behaviors, creating space for people to openly talk about barriers, and making experimentation the norm so we can adapt the solution to the people and the situation. And at the end of that episode, I said something that I think opens up a much bigger conversation. I said, well, what if I've done all that and people still resist? Because sometimes we do make success easier, right? We create a better process, we explain the why, we set expectations, we listen to concerns, we experiment, and people still push back. They still hesitate, they still avoid it, they still find reasons to just not do it. And when that happens, it's really easy to say they're resisting the change. But what if they're not? What if what we are seeing and interpreting as resistance is actually something else entirely? This is what I'd like to explore with you today. This is a new hypothesis that I have personally been exploring. I think people don't actually resist change. I think they resist the future they imagine will be true when a change is implemented. And if that's true, it completely changes how we should approach resistance and the people experiencing it. And potentially, we're missing some really important steps in our standard change management practices. Whew! I'm excited to dig into this. Let's dive in. Welcome to Thoughts on Change, the podcast about the messy, political, emotional, deeply human side of leading change. I'm Kelly, and I believe anyone can implement lead tools until they actually have to get people to use them. Around here, we talk about how to move culture, how to build credibility, and how to influence without bulldozing. Basically, how to herd humans without losing your mind. Let's start with what we usually mean by resistance. So think about the last time somebody resisted, air quotes, an improvement you were trying to make. They probably said something like, We've tried that before, that's not going to work, people aren't going to like this, we don't have time for this. Why are we changing something that's working? And one of my favorites, management comes up with these ideas, and then we're the ones who have to deal with them. Or maybe they didn't say anything at all. They just didn't show up, didn't participate, didn't follow the new process, kept doing things the old way. We tend to look at all of those behaviors and say they're resisting the change. And that makes sense. There is a change happening. There's a new process, a new technology, a new organizational structure, a new expectation, a new way of working. And so we assume the change itself is the problem. But here's where I think we need to try something different. Instead of asking, why don't they want this change? I would propose we ask, what do they think their world is going to look like when this change actually happens? And that's a very different question. And I think it will lead to a very different response from us. Every change has a future attached to it, right? We CI practitioners and change leaders probably describe that future in very positive terms. You're going to have less work. This process will be easier. We'll finally have the visibility we need. You won't have to deal with this problem anymore. We're going to save time. We're going to improve quality. And from our perspective, that future generally looks fantastic. But here's the problem: we don't all imagine the same future. I might look at a new automated process and see less manual work, more consistency, fewer headaches. But a tenured operator might look at the exact same automated process and see their job disappearing, their skills becoming irrelevant, more monitoring, less control, more work during the transition, a boss who can now see exactly how fast they're working. Same change, completely different futures and feelings. And when you believe in that future, that operator described and what that looks like, of course, you're going to react to it with resistance. But your brain doesn't stop at that first picture of a future. Wherever there isn't full information about that future, your brain immediately starts filling in the blanks. What will my day look like? Who will I work with? What will I be responsible for? Will I still be good at this? Will people still need me? Will I have any control? Will I have more work? What happens if I can't figure it out? What happens if I fail? What happens if this doesn't work? What happens to me? Whew. It is so easy for us to spiral out of control, imagining what will happen and what it will be like when that change happens. And that future, where our brain spirals out of control, filling in the blanks, is probably very different from the one that a change leader or CI practitioner is imagining. Right? Imagine you're replacing that manual process that someone's been doing for 20 years with automation. Right. We CI practitioners would see we're eliminating a bunch of tedious work. But that operator might see the thing I'm really good at won't be needed anymore. We see we're giving you a new tool. They see I'm going to have to learn something new, and everyone is going to see that I'm not good at it. We see we're standardizing the process. But they see I'm losing the autonomy I've had for years. Same change, different imagined futures. And here's where I think this gets really interesting. Because our brains don't just fill in the blanks about what the future is going to look like. We also try to predict what the future is going to feel like. There's a concept in psychology called affective forecasting. Researchers Timothy Wilson and Daniel Gilbert have studied how we predict our emotional reactions to things that haven't happened yet. And what they found is that we're actually kind of shit at it. We tend to overestimate how intensely and for how long we're going to feel the emotions we associate with future events. They call this the impact bias. Think about that for a minute. We're sitting here in the present, imagining a future, and then predicting, hmm, when that happens, this is how I'm going to feel. And more often than not, our brains are really, really wrong. And one of the reasons this happens is something that researchers call focalism. When we're imagining the future, we tend to focus so heavily on the specific event we're talking about now that we underestimate all of the other things that will also be happening in our lives. And I think this is incredibly relevant to how we experience change. Let's go back to that automation change earlier, right? Imagine you've now told somebody we're going to automate this process. They might immediately imagine, I'm going to have to learn something completely new. I'm going to be slower. Everyone is going to see that I'm struggling. My job is going to change. I'm going to lose the thing I'm really good at. And then their brain starts forecasting the feelings associated with what they imagine. I'm going to feel anxious. I'm going to feel incompetent. I'm going to feel like I don't have control. I'm going to hate this. And then they react in the present with those emotions, to those emotions that they expect to experience in the future. And the really interesting thing is we don't know yet whether that future is actually going to feel that way. Maybe six months later, they're incredibly comfortable with the new process. And, you know, maybe they look back and think, why was I so worried about this? But they don't know that yet. They're making decisions today based on a forecast of how tomorrow is going to feel. And what Wilson and Gilbert discovered is that we suck at this kind of forecasting. Now, I want to be really careful here. I'm not saying that their research proves that people resist organizational change because they are imagining the wrong future, right? That's my hypothesis. And that's what I'm exploring. What the research gives us is evidence for something underneath that hypothesis. And that's that human beings routinely imagine future events and predict how those events will make us feel. And those predictions aren't always accurate. So when someone responds and reacts strongly to a change that hasn't happened yet, I think they're not reacting to the change. I think they're reacting to that future that they've imagined and the feelings that they've predicted that they're going to have when they get there. And if this is true, I think this is where we get ourselves into trouble as CI practitioners. Because we're trained to use facts and data, right? Analysis, evidence, observation. We see someone pushing back and think, oh, they just don't have the information, or they just don't understand why this is important. So we give them more. Here's more data. Here's the business case, the ROI, the benchmark, the research, the chart, the PowerPoint. And here's your boss saying why this is important. And they still aren't convinced. So we give them more of everything. Because surely if we just give them enough evidence and the why, they'll see what we see. But what if they're already seeing it? What if they understand perfectly well that the change will improve productivity? They're just worried about what that productivity improvement means for them and what that means about their future and how they will feel. The data might answer, will this work? But it doesn't necessarily answer, what will my life be like if it works? And that's a completely different question and line of thinking. And a change doesn't even have to be bad for the future to feel threatening. In fact, the change can be objectively better, safer, more efficient. It can make sense, it can eliminate tedious work, and people can still see a threatening future for them. People experience these potential futures as uncertainty and the potential to lose something: status, um, identity, control, competence, belonging, autonomy, security. And these things are really important. They're part of a hierarchy of needs. And this is where I think our standard change management practices are not fully serving us. So let's take ADCAR, A D K A R for example. For those who don't know, ADCAR was developed by Jeff Hyatt after studying why organizational change efforts succeed or fail and identifying five building blocks individuals need to move through change. Um, a awareness, D, desire, K, knowledge, A, ability, and R reinforcement. And this was first introduced by his company, Prosky. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that right, sorry if I'm not, in the late 1990s. And the model shifted the focus of change management toward the individual experience of change rather than treating organizational change as something that happens to a group all at once. And ADCAR is a great model, and it has helped us think much more about the individual when it comes to change. But if we consider my hypothesis that people are not resisting the actual change, but the future they imagine, ADCAR doesn't quite cover it. This is why I'm starting to think about resistance and change management a little bit differently. Instead of seeing resistance as an obstacle to overcome, what if we saw it as critical information we need? Resistance is giving us clues about the future someone is imagining. When someone says that's not going to work, maybe the future they're imagining is one where they're constantly fixing problems created by the new process. Or when someone says this is going to create more work, maybe they're imagining a future where they're already overloaded and this change just adds another responsibility. Or maybe even when someone says, I don't think we need to change, maybe they're imagining a future where the risks of changing are greater than the risks of staying where they are. Right. The words they're saying are about the change, but the fear underneath the words may be about the future. And if we use the standard ad car approach, that process, I think this is what it would look like. So for awareness, right, we inform them about the change and the benefits we see. They hear and see the information and they still imagine a future that might not be good for them. And so we move into desire. And we try to convince them this change will be better for them. And they they not only keep imagining that future, but now they're hearing us tell them how to feel about it. And I don't know about you all, but whenever I've told somebody how to feel about something, it usually has blown up in my face. Um, and not only that, it erodes trust and credibility, which is really important currency for us. So we're already off to a great start. So what should we do then? Right? I'm not saying we should suddenly become amateur therapists every time someone pushes back. I will never advocate for that. And I don't think that every objection is secretly fear. Sometimes the process really is a bad idea. Sometimes the data is wrong or is incomplete. Sometimes people have legitimate operational concerns. And we need to listen to those things. But when we hear resistance, I want us to get curious before we get defensive or before we just plow on through our change management process. Instead of immediately trying to overcome the objection or convince them harder so we can check off desire from our ad card checklist and move on to knowledge. I think we need to try asking, what are you worried this will mean for you? Or what do you think will be different for you if we make this change? Or maybe even if this change works exactly as intended, what concerns you about that future? Heck, we could even get really to it and say, what are you imagining your day will look like after this change? These questions take us somewhere very different. They move the conversation from how do I convince you this is a good idea to help me understand the future you're seeing. And then we have something we can actually work with. Then we're walking the same path and we're seeing the same things. Remember that sometimes the future someone is imagining is based on incomplete information. They may be filling in the blanks, and that's understandable. When we don't know what the future looks like, our brains have to make predictions. So someone might be imagining this means I'm going to lose my job when the actual future is their role is changing, but their experience is exactly why we need them. And that is why one of our jobs as change leaders is to help people see a more complete picture of the future. Not sell them a fantasy, not tell them everything will be wonderful, but help close the gap between the future they're imagining and the future we're actually trying to create. This goes beyond the data and evidence. We need to play them the movie. We need them to see the same future we see. And of course, we won't always be successful at doing this. But it is critical that we make the effort. So here's the shift I would like all of us to experiment with. The next time you encounter resistance, don't start with why are they resisting? Start with what future are they resisting? What do they think they're going to lose? What do they think is going to get harder? What are they afraid will happen? What are they uncertain about? What does this change mean for their role, their identity, their competence, their control, or their security? And most importantly, what are they imagining that we aren't? Because that question might tell us far more about the resistance than another PowerPoint ever will. And if I'm right about this, that resistance comes from imagined futures, and I'm still calling it a hypothesis because I'm continuing to explore and test it, then buy-in isn't really about getting someone to agree that a change is a good idea. It's about helping them believe that they can have a future with this change in place that they're willing to step into and live in. Then instead of doing our standard bring more data or convince harder during that desire phase of change management, we need to work to build that belief instead, that belief that there is a future after this change that is livable. And through this, when there is something they imagine about the future that you didn't account for, improve the change, right? Lower the risk that their imagined future actually comes to pass. Then when you've implemented the change and are working on sustainment, keep those imagined futures in mind and watch out for them coming true. This might require serious adjustments to the change, but it means there is a much higher chance of it sticking long term. It's all about helping them believe that they can have a future with this change in place that they're willing to step into.Right? This theory and need to help people believe they can live in the future of a change is a much bigger challenge. I get that. But it's also a much more human one. And I think that's where we need to go next. Because once we understand that resistance may be about an imagined future, we can start asking a much more interesting question, which is what exactly are people afraid that future will contain? And that's where I'd like to take us next in our next episode. We'll start digging into the different fears that can sit underneath resistance and why the same change can trigger completely different reactions in different people. Until then, the next time someone resists your improvement, resist the urge to convince them. Get curious instead. And ask yourself, what future are they seeing? Because you might just discover that you're not actually arguing about the change at all. You're arguing about what happens after. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time. That's a wrap for this episode of Thoughts on Change. If you're also out there trying to move culture instead of just installing tools, hit subscribe and share this with a fellow CI warrior. And remember, progress beats perfection, curiosity beats control, and culture beats everything. See you next time.