Have you ever introduced a change that made complete sense, only to watch people quietly find ways around it?
I have seen versions of this in different organisations.
A new platform is introduced to replace an old, manual way of working. The project team has done what it was supposed to do. The system has been tested. Training has been delivered. Communications have gone out.
Yet, weeks later, the team is still maintaining its old spreadsheet.
From the project team’s perspective, the conclusion seems obvious: people are resistant to change.
So another reminder is sent. Managers are asked to reinforce the new process. Perhaps another training session is arranged.
Still, the spreadsheet remains.
Then someone finally asks the team why they are holding on to it.
It turns out that the new platform works well for standard cases, but not for the exceptions they encounter every day. The spreadsheet helps them keep track of those cases. More importantly, if something goes missing, the system will not be held responsible. They will.
What looked like resistance was not simply a refusal to change.
It was protection.
The danger of calling people resistant
“Resistance” is a convenient word.
It gives us an explanation for why change is not moving at the pace we expected. It places the problem somewhere identifiable, usually with the people who are not responding as planned.
They are afraid of change.
They are too comfortable with the old way.
They do not understand the benefits.
They need to be brought on board.
Sometimes this may be true.
But once we decide that someone is resistant, we often stop being curious. We listen only long enough to work out how to persuade them. We no longer ask whether their response might make sense from where they are standing.
The team using the spreadsheet could have attended another three training sessions. It would not have resolved the real concern.
The issue was never a lack of understanding. The system expected people to use the new process, while continuing to hold them accountable for risks that the process did not fully address.
Their behaviour was reasonable within the conditions surrounding them.
People do not experience change as a project plan
A change may look orderly on a project plan: design, test, communicate, train, launch.
People experience it differently.
They may experience it as the loss of something they were good at. A shift in who gets heard. A change in relationships. Additional work that nobody has acknowledged. Or another promise that things will improve, when their experience of previous changes tells them otherwise.
This is where an organisational psychology lens becomes useful. It draws our attention to trust, motivation, identity, fairness and the experiences people carry with them.
Systems thinking widens the view further. It asks us to look at what is happening around the person: the structures, incentives, relationships, decision-making patterns and informal rules influencing their behaviour.
Instead of asking:
“Why are these people resisting?”
We can ask:
“What is their response helping us see?”
That one question can lead to a very different conversation.
Resistance may be carrying information
A team’s resistance may reveal that the proposed solution does not reflect how work actually happens.
It may show that leaders are asking for one behaviour while rewarding another.
It may expose a lack of trust created long before the current change began.
Or it may tell us that people understand the change perfectly well, but do not believe the organisation has understood what it is asking them to give up.
This does not mean resistance is always right.
Some people do prefer what is familiar. Some concerns are driven by personal interests. There will also be situations where leaders have listened, considered the implications and must still proceed with a difficult decision.
Listening does not mean surrendering the decision.
It means understanding what is happening before deciding how to respond.
There is a difference between someone who does not understand the change, someone who lacks the resources to make it work, and someone who understands it but disagrees with it. Yet organisations often respond to all three in exactly the same way: more communication.
What is the desired outcome?
When resistance appears, it is worth returning to a more fundamental question:
What is the desired outcome?
Is the aim to get everyone to stop using the spreadsheet?
Or is it to create a reliable process that people can use without placing themselves or the organisation at risk?
Those may sound like the same outcome, but they are not.
The first focuses on compliance. The second asks whether the change works within the realities of the organisation.
If we are not clear about the outcome, it is easy to become preoccupied with whether people are following the plan. We may successfully remove the spreadsheet while leaving the original risk unresolved.
The change appears to have been adopted. The problem has simply moved somewhere less visible.
Before you push harder, pause
The next time someone is described as resistant, pause before accepting the label.
Ask what has changed for them.
Ask what they believe they are being asked to risk or lose.
Ask whether the organisation has created the time, authority and conditions needed for them to work differently.
And ask what they might be able to see that is less visible from the project or leadership level.
You may still decide that the original direction is right. You may still need to set firm expectations and hold people accountable.
But you will be responding to what is actually happening, rather than to a convenient explanation of it.
Resistance is rarely comfortable. It interrupts timelines, complicates decisions and challenges the story we want to tell ourselves about how well the change is going.
But it can also reveal what the organisation has not yet understood.
That is the gift.
The question is whether we are willing to unwrap it.
Every organisation has its own history, relationships and unspoken dynamics. If resistance is appearing in a change you are navigating, we would welcome a conversation to understand the particular context, clarify the desired outcome and explore what may be sitting beneath the visible response.