3 Ways To Recognize When Change Resistance Is An Urgent Problem
In today's fast-paced business environment, organizational change is constant. Yet according to McKinsey, nearly 70% of change initiatives fail, often due to employee resistance. But how do you know when change resistance has become an urgent problem that demands immediate attention?
Based on our work with senior leaders navigating complex transformations, here are three telltale signs that change resistance has become critical:
1. Your Leaders Are Avoiding Communication
When your leadership team starts avoiding conversations about the change, that's a red flag. In an engagement with a global medical device company, their regional service division head initially faced this challenge. Leaders weren't fully explaining the "why" behind a major regionalization effort, creating gaps in understanding. When leaders stop communicating, it's not just silence—it's creating a vacuum that gets filled with rumors and anxiety.
2. Performance Indicators Start Slipping
Change resistance rarely announces itself loudly. Instead, it shows up in subtle performance shifts: slight increases in error rates, missed deadlines, or declining customer satisfaction scores. These might seem minor initially, but they often signal underlying resistance that can compound quickly. Watch for these early warning signs before they become systemic problems that threaten your entire transformation.
3. Uncharacteristic Behaviors Emerge in Key Teams
In high-functioning teams, resistance often manifests as behavioral shifts: increased conflict in meetings, unexpected emotional reactions, or disengagement from previously engaged team members. In this case, their team of engineers, normally structured and methodical, showed significant concern about potential disruption to long-standing working relationships, especially with many team members having 15+ years with the company.
Learn From a Real-World Success Story
During one of our Interactive Online Conversation (IOC) with senior leaders we featured a success case study. Our client shared how we supported their team through a major regionalization affecting over 200 people, including a significant restructuring that impacted more than 30% of their back office operations.
The transformation could have easily failed, especially with a team of engineers deeply established in their ways of working. Instead, through our deliberate focus on the people side of change, they maintained employee engagement scores throughout the transition and created lasting cultural improvements in openness, proactivity, and collaboration.
Want to learn how we did it? Drop your favorite emoji in the comments to get a link to the replay of our conversation to discover:
How to create psychological safety during major organizational shifts
Ways to maintain performance while implementing significant structural changes
Practical approaches to building change resilience in traditionally change-resistant teams
What change challenges is your organization facing? We'd love to hear your experiences in the comments below.
The Change-Resilient Advantage Group specializes in helping organizations successfully navigate transformational change by focusing on the people side of change—where most initiatives succeed or fail.
