Change resistance has long been one of the most popular management euphemisms, to explain why employees are less than enthused by a company’s latest plans. But dss+ expert Andre Pereira explains that to get most from their change programmes, leaders need to ask inconvenient questions about why their staff might be ‘resistant’ in the first place.
Ever wonder why we talk about “resistance to change” like it’s some kind of corporate infection? The phrase itself betrays us, borrowed from physics, where resistance converts useful energy into wasted heat. Perfect for explaining circuits but spectacularly unhelpful for understanding humans.
This framing traces back to the 1940s studies of factory workers. Management science back then viewed humans primarily as extensions of machinery, efficient when properly operated, problematic when not. Their metaphor stuck like industrial glue to management thinking, and we’ve been stuck with it ever since.
And here we are, decades later, still trying to “overcome resistance” as if our colleagues were faulty components rather than walking archives of organisational knowledge. Wander through any airport bookstore. You’ll find shelves groaning with titles about “overcoming resistance”, but precious few exploring what employee concerns might actually tell us. The imbalance is telling.
Dent and Goldberg genuinely challenged this view in their 1999 research, ‘Challenging Resistance to Change’ in the Journal of Applied Behavioural Science. They demonstrated that labelling employee responses as resistance fundamentally misrepresents what’s happening during organisational transitions. People rarely resist change itself, they resist loss of status, comfort, or meaning. They resist poorly implemented ideas. They resist repeating painful history. They resist the uncertainty of yet another attempt at change, and that their leaders may not have the heart in the right place, or the capabilities to lead them into the unknown.
But saying “Bob is resistant” is so much tidier than examining our implementation approach, isn’t it?
This resistance frame flattens remarkably complex human responses into a one-dimensional obstacle. When your finance director questions the need for that improvement project, she might intellectually support your initiative while emotionally processing uncertainty and behaviourally attempting to protect critical operations. Labelling this rich landscape of response as “resistance” is like calling the Grand Canyon “a hole”.
The memory behind what we call resistance
So what’s actually happening when Dave from IT peppers you with questions about your exciting new digital transformation?
Ford, Ford, and D’Amelio’s 2008 research ‘Resistance to Change: The Rest of the Story’ offers a compelling alternative: what we’re witnessing isn’t resistance to the future but memory of the past. Those questions and concerns reflect not opposition to your proposal but accumulated experience with every previous initiative that resembled it.
This organisational memory, the collected wisdom from past successes and failures, operates like a corporate immune system. Sometimes it overreacts, true. But it exists for good reason.
Andre Pereira speaking at a TEDx conference. Image credit: Theo Axton
Consider Nokia’s smartphone debacle. Engineers raised concerns about operating system choices during that fateful transition period. Leadership labelled them technologically conservative, resistant to innovation. These engineers weren’t protecting the status quo but channelling institutional memory about technical realities that leadership had conveniently forgotten. History proved them right, though by then it was too late.
Uncertainty triggers protective mechanisms because our prehistoric brains prioritise safety when navigating unfamiliar territory. It reminds me of when I was mountain biking in Brazil on an unfamiliar trail. I instinctively ease off the pedal now and scan for hidden obstacles because of a vivid memory of a spectacular crash I took ten years ago, when overconfidence sent me flying over the handlebars.
The cost of mislabelling memory as resistance
This framing creates “leadership abdication”, a self-serving pattern where leaders attribute change failures to employee stubbornness rather than flawed planning or execution. How convenient to conclude, “Our plan was brilliant, but people just wouldn’t get on board!”
It’s the organisational equivalent of “it’s not me, it’s you” in a breakup. Usually equally accurate, too.
The costs are real and quantifiable. Multiple studies suggest that organisations that treat employee concerns as valuable intelligence rather than obstacles achieve dramatically better implementation outcomes. The exact numbers vary, but the pattern persists across sectors and change types. When leaders interpret employee hesitation as valuable intelligence rather than obstruction, they access critical information about implementation challenges that might otherwise remain invisible until disaster strikes.
Moving from resistance-thinking to memory-valuing requires fundamentally different practices. Rather than trying to measure and overcome “resistance levels” (whatever those actually are), we might create what I call “memory maps”, capturing previous experiences that shape current perception.
The language inevitably shifts from overcoming resistance to building on experience. Addressing barriers transforms into incorporating insights. Not just semantics, but entirely different mental models for leading change.
What would change if we changed our language?
This linguistic shift creates ripple effects throughout the organisation. When cautious responses signify valuable feedback rather than opposition, conversations transform from battles into explorations. The energy shifts from overcoming people to leveraging collective insight.
Perhaps most importantly, this reframing forces greater leadership accountability. When employee reactions stem from experiences with previous changes, many led by the very same executives and change agents now pushing new initiatives, responsibility shifts uncomfortably. The question changes from “why won’t these people change?” to “what did we do previously that created legitimate concerns?”
No wonder we prefer the resistance narrative. The alternative demands more from leaders.
What might happen in your next change initiative if you banned the word “resistance” from every conversation? How would your planning change if you approached employee questions as valuable artefacts revealing your organisation’s implementation history? What critical knowledge might emerge if people knew their experiential wisdom would be treated as treasure rather than trouble?
That stubborn 70% failure rate for organisational transformations documented by numerous studies over the past 30 years might reflect not the inherent difficulty of change itself, but our stubborn insistence on treating organisational memory as an enemy rather than our most valuable ally.
Makes you wonder what else we’ve been getting wrong all these years, doesn’t it? But what do I know? I’m probably just being resistant.
André Pereira is a senior manager at dss+, where he leads business development initiatives in the UK for food, beverage and consumer goods industries.