How can the 70% failure rate of all organizational change initiatives be reduced?
How can change leaders tranform their employees' resistance into commmitment and support -- since more often than not conventional attempts to "overcome" resistance to change result in increased resistance?

More change efforts in the workplace fail than succeed - to the tune of a 70% failure rate. Survey of Fortune 500 execs attribute it to resistance to change. This book provides the first practical method that works for reducing the failure rate by dissolving resistance. Past attempts to overcome resistance do not work. They deal only with the logic-based resistance, but not the emotion-based resistance, sometimes called the "people problems" of change. Until now, no simple, practical tools existed that helped the manager deal with emotion-based resistance to change. This book provides those tools.

2. How bad is the track record for organizational change projects?

Overall, on average 70% of all organizational change efforts fail.

Research results have found failure rates for the following specific change initiatives:

Mergers & Acquisitions 58% - 77% fail
TQM-driven change 67% - 73% fail
Re-engineering 71% - 90% fail
Software Development 67% - 84% fail
Technological Change 60% - 80% fail
Computer System Change 76% - 83% fail
Strategy Development 42% - 90% fail
Restructuring 50% - 90% fail

For specific references, see the free report: 70% Failure Rate: References.

3. What causes the failure rate to be so high?

Resistance to change, often referred to as the "people problems" with change cause the failure rate to be so high.

For a change project to be successful, everyone involved must "play their part." Resistance to change prevents them from playing their part. The problem lies in the fact that resistance is assumed to be a logical problem to solve. But we know from our personal life experience that resistance also has an emotion-based aspect - which often is much stronger than its logical brother.

4. Why did you write the book?

I wrote this book to remove the mystique of resistance to change.

I want to show how our succeses at handling change in our personal lives can be leveraged to become better change leaders at work.

5. What exactly is resistance to change?

Resistance to change is a personal reluctance to "play my part" in making a change initiative successful. The success of all organizational change efforts ultimately sinks or swims on whether all individuals affected do their particular part to make it a success.

Resistance is not opposition: It is NOT any and all forces against making a change. Many things can prevent change, for example, political factions in the company, conflict between departments or divisions, policies that deify the old way of doing things, forces in the market.

What does it sound like? Resistance sounds like two, non-stop tape recorders. One is rational, the other emotion-based. The rational tape says, "Don't do it unless certain personally important issues are resolved first." The emotion-based tape tells us, "Don't do it, even if all personally important issues are resolved first, and even if you should, and even if it is good for you."

Logical resistance has been looked at for 50 years. Emotion-based resistance has been ignored. This book brings emotion-based resistance out of the closet and provides practical tools to dissolve it.

6. This sounds a bit like psychotherapy. Is it?

No. It's educational.

Therapy looks to the past and asks, "Why?" This book looks to the future and asks, "What?" and "How?"

The foundation of the book is the belief that we all have collected a treasure trove of successful change experiences through our lives. We simply do not realize it. Anyone who can identify a "blessing in disguise" somewhere in their past, has just identified an example of a successful change experience.

The book helps people organize their wealth of experience with successfully handling change in their lives. Then it shows how to transfer that wisdom to become a better change leader at work.

7. Is this a self-help book?

Yes, and much, much more.

First and foremost, this book is a manual for managers and change leaders. It gives them a step-by-step conversation guide to use when helping their employees transform their resistance and contribute positively to change efforts at work.

However, in order to do that well, managers and leaders must deal with and eliminate their own personal resistance to each change they must lead BEFORE they can help their employees do the same. This book provides 22 action steps, along with the reasons why each is important, that will enable them to do that.

8. Who will this book help? And how?

Executives, Managers, Employees, and Consultants will be helped.

EXECUTIVES will find change cheaper, faster, & more likely to stick.
MANAGERS will discover change to be more clear, less threatening, and easier to be successful.
EMPLOYEES will enjoy a less traumatic, more positive, and more respectful environment for change.
CONSULTANTS finally will have their advice honored and executed as planned.

9. What is special about your book and what distinguishes it fom its primary competitors?

It tells the whole story, not just a piece here or a piece there.

For instance,

It brings emotion-based resistance to change out of the workplace closet and provides a straight-forward, intuitively appealing method to understand and eliminate it.
It details a 7-stage, 21-topic conversational roadmap for discussing resistance to change with employees in order to dissolve its harmful effects.
It leverages our common sense and life experience to improve our ability to lead change at work.

Have you ever noticed how Who Moved My Cheese -- appetizing morsel that it is -- still leaves you yearning for more? Or how Bill Bridges' Managing Transitions makes sense -- as far as it goes? Both invite you to dinner, but serve only one dish. Me? Change? Not Now. Not Ever! serves up the entire feast in an easily digestible, satisfying manner.

Who Moved My Cheese makes the important point that we must take personal responsibility for our attitude to change. Me? Change? identifies 21 additional actions we must take.

Likewise, Managing Transitions makes the important point that change is experienced "backwards" in that it starts with an ending, proceeds through the middle "neutral zone," and ends with a beginning. Me? Change? uses this fact to establish a sense of stability for the change process, and then identifies 21 additional actions we must take.

Me? Change? Not Now. Not Ever! How to Dissolve Hard-Core Resistance to Change in the Workplace teaches managers and executives how to transform their employees' resistance into commitment and support for positive organizational change.

10. What does the reader take away from this book?

For starters, it delivers the following eleven outcomes:

A 7-Step, 22-Topic Conversation Guide to transform employees from "change antagonists" to "advocates for change."
Insight into the missing part of the equation that leverages common sense and past experience into successful change leadership at work.
An understanding of the difference between the forces in the environment causing Opposition to Change and the personal forces causing Resistance to Change.
An understanding of the two types of resistance, Logic-Based Resistance to Change and Emotion-Based Resistance to Change, and practical methods and activities to reduce or eliminate both.
A new understanding of the role of manager-as-change-leader.
Guaranteed boost in your "Change Confidence Quotient."
Clear strategies to handle your employees' rational and emotional stubborn streaks.
An intuitive and visual method for understanding why and how resistance to change sabotages problem-solving and decision-making around change projects.
A way to make sure irrational resistance never again ruins your best-laid plans.
Insight into what an organization has to do to support its change leaders in managing resistance to organizational change projects.
A tool to identify and deal with resistance to change that threatens efforts to lead organizational change projects throughout the entire process, sometimes lasting for years.

11. How could your book help people who are going through downsizing? Career change? Promotion? Retirement?

It helps them make rational decisions in the face of the emotional upheaval caused by pressure to change.

Me? Change? Not Now. Not Ever! shows them how to take a step back and deal with their hidden barriers to change. Only then can they make well-informed decisions about how to handle the pressure to change. It gives people the skills to deal with their personal reactions to a change before being asked to solve the problem of, "What am I going to do next?" and, "How will I do it successfully?" It helps people deal with their emotion-based resistance to change.

Each situation mentioned above creates fear of the future and forces us to give up some good stuff from how things used to be. The typical problem is that most efforts to deal with each transition starts with the logical steps for "getting back up on the horse." That is, people are put under pressure to deal with each change only as a logical problem to solve.

However, we know from our personal experience that does not work very well. I have a friend who totally ignores the scientific data and refuses to stop smoking. If our emotion-based reaction to a change is strong, trying to apply logical problem solving not only does not work very well, it actually makes it more difficult to handle the change.

Therefore we see people not using the services of an outplacement firm, or dismissing out of hand the possibility of changing careers (work is only a job if you'd rather be doing something else), fighting the new social and job demands of a new job, or greeting retirement with depression and grumpy relations with their spouse.

12. How does resistance to change affect problem solving?

Resistance to change distorts reality and sabotages problem solving.

Roe instance, resistance:

Conceals the real issues
Makes small problems seem huge.
Distorts our perceptions of the pro's and con's of the change.
Prevents closure by generating a never-ending supply of "problems" to solve.

13. What are the major contributions your book makes?

This book:

Reframes the meaning of resistance to change to include both: logic-based resistance and emotion-based resistance.
Redefines the role expectations of the change leader.
Relates the step-by-step details of a 7-stage, 22-topic discussion pocess that helps dissolve resistance and replace it with commitment to positive change.

14. What are the most common mistakes when it comes to change in the workplace?

Prematurely attributing insubordination and blind reliance on logical problem solving to "overcome" the resistance are common mistakes.

Specifically, change leaders tend to:

Assume resistors are negative (not the resistance they are expressing)
Assume resistance is "overcome" with logical problem solving.
Ignore, or denigrate, the emotion-based resistance we all have toward any change.
Label resistors "insubordinate" without first dissolving their emotion-based reactions to making a change.

15. What are some signs that resistance is holding your organization back?

Perfectly good change projects get stuck or fail outright.
People overreact to objectively small changes.
Solving one problem with a change is immediately replaced with another problem.
Talk of insubordination for resistors.

Also, when you try to talk to employees about a change:

Having "red herrings" thrown up to deflect the conversation.
Picky excuses offered.
Long-winded explanations of why things are the way they are.
Having employees pretend ignorance and ask "Why?" "Why?" "Why?"
Shows of emotion.
Dragging out tradition ("We've always done it this way").
Verbal diarrhea and intellectualizing.

16. What is the #1 reason for lack of competent change leadership?

Exclusive reliance upon rational problem solving is the top reason.

Confusing "strong" leadership with rational problem solving -- and ignoring the emotion-based reactions all executives, managers, supervisors, and employees have when put under pressure to change -- is a huge error. The prescription is to accept the reality of both logical and emotion-based resistance. Then learn the conversation skills necessary to help others dissolve both types of resistance.

17. How can readers get this book?

To get a signed copy and a free report: Click here.

Or, call our toll-free number: 888-876-6531
or email: jy@stablechange.com.