DIGITAL SPECIAL Overcoming Resistance to Digital Change
Leaders need to see the
ways in which digital change is different.
Going digital
requires a lot of change management, and perhaps more time and energy is spent
here than on anything else. Why would that be the case? Organisations on the
digital journey may need to rethink core roles and processes. The result is
that as much as companies may aim for external disruption in
these changes, there is also likely to be severe internal disruption.
This is why “cool” digital ideas may not seem so cool or friendly to internal
stakeholders. In fact, they may be very hostile. Also, these changes may
involve deeper learning curves, with initial losses of efficiency and/or
effectiveness, as the core system is in transition (i.e. things are likely to
get worse first before they get better, and the trough potentially deeper than
other sorts of change). Finally, the integration needs of digitising companies
may be greater than other forms of change, with more unintended consequences of
digital changes (i.e. knock-on effects to other systems and processes or
partners).
For these reasons,
the journey may be a bumpy one. The pace and extent of change can unsettle
staff and manifest itself in the form of resistance, and according to our
interviews with digitising companies, that resistance can be especially strong
among middle managers. This level in the organisation seems to be particularly
troubled by digital transformation. But this begs the question of why? Is the
reasoning fairly obvious (digitisation as a threat) or is more going on? We
found, in fact, three factors.
The first reason we
came across was certainly the perceived threat of the change. For example, one
participant explained that the shift for organisations to be driven by data and
analytics is a direct assault on middle managers sense of control. “You're
basically saying your customer is your expert now and your customer knows
what's best. Maybe what [managers] thought was the right thing to do doesn't
matter as much anymore,” said one. There is also the threat of learning new
technologies.
The second reason is
seemingly obvious but underappreciated: time. Time to learn, to set up new
routines or collaborate more broadly is now of the essence. But the lives of
most middle managers are filled with meetings, reports and a bureaucracy that
they need to feed on a daily basis. Who has time for retooling? They are also
shackled to metrics and legacy incentives that focus them on near-term results
or legacy processes. This leaves middle management with little time to get up
to speed with other organisational initiatives. One interviewee told us “we
don’t really have a reward system for things like that [involvement in digital
initiatives]”. Ultimately, meeting their official targets is what they are
appraised on. “It’s a time and a priority issue,” they continued.
The third is value.
Middle management may resist for the simple reason that a digital idea or
initiative lacks value. Organisations can certainly be swept up in what appear
to be game-changing new technologies that might not become big hits. Therefore,
digital leaders need to be careful not to confuse personal threat and rigidity
“resistance” with honest “questioning” of the value proposition behind a new
digital initiative.
The change agent’s to
do list
As we established in
our interviews, not all middle managers are driven by purely self-protection.
Neither are they clueless about the importance of things digital. It is likely
that their personal lives are filled with an abundance of digital technologies,
so they understand the potential.
So what should change
agents do? Our interviews with executives actively involved in shaping the
digital future of their companies revealed three strategies they could employ.
First, create a sense
of opportunity, not only threat. One interviewee told us that what middle
managers are looking for from their leaders is a “clearly established sense of
what you’re trying to achieve”. They want clarity from their leadership to
fully understand the strategy and absorb the changes to see how they can apply
their skillsets or learn what needs to be learned.
The same participant
continued, “What can happen within digital is that because there’s so much
uncertainty, you don’t pay enough attention to your strategy, what are you
really trying to achieve and how do we innovate within that.”
Second, create a
narrative to educate. Constant education is essential to digitisation, which
means digital leaders need to get into the corridors, lunch rooms, meeting
areas, virtual chatrooms and engage people. The importance of engagement cannot
be underestimated as far as one interviewee was concerned: “Within the last 12
months, I think we achieved a lot in terms of probably 50 percent of the middle
management is now accepting what we are doing…They say ‘okay, we understand
what they are doing. We understand how they are doing it’. We are also…taking
people from the middle management and saying ‘okay, you are responsible for
managing the investment into this and that.’”
Education may, in
fact, need to go further. Firms should consider systematic efforts (time and
resources) to help middle managers get up to speed on new digital technologies
and methods. This does not mean turning a middle manager into an expert in data
analytics, but some training in specific skills may be valuable and perfectly
adequate. Unless the education sector can quickly produce an overabundance of
new talent with such digital skills (which seems unlikely), some retraining may
be necessary.
Finally, resistance
may not fade away completely unless digitalisation activities are taken
seriously and allocated real power and status. Leaders, therefore, need to make
sure that digital roles and structures have the power to do their work and push
the organisation along, not just pull.
“In the past, the
digital leaders were not as important as the [core business] leaders and we are
now better [positioned] in the structure and have more power. This is one
important part,” said one interviewee.
In summary, our interviews suggest that
managing digital change requires more appreciation of integration issues and
internal disruption consequences, and the clear building of expectations.
Managers need to understand exactly why people resist (fear, but also a lack of
time and recognition, and serious questions about value) and address their
worries accordingly. Finally, we need to think seriously about retooling
methods for middle managers
Charles Galunic, INSEAD Professor of Organisational Behaviour | October 20, 2017
Read more at
https://knowledge.insead.edu/leadership-organisations/overcoming-resistance-to-digital-change-7496?utm_source=INSEAD+Knowledge&utm_campaign=bbc918ab98-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_10_26&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_e079141ebb-bbc918ab98-249840429#3QGVt83OGm4pTDbJ.99
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