Preventing and Managing Resistance to Organizational Change

After working with organizations through thousands of change initiatives, we've noticed practitioners spend enormous energy responding to resistance that could have been prevented. They build elaborate response strategies, hold difficult conversations, and work to convert detractors when the real opportunity was months earlier during planning. The pattern is understandable. Resistance feels urgent when it appears. But our research tells a different story about where to focus your effort.

What Prosci Research Reveals About Resistance to Change

In our Best Practices in Change Management research, participants identified the top reason employees resist change isn't fear, like many people assume. It's not even desire to maintain the status quo. It's lack of awareness about the purpose and reason for the change.

This matters because it fundamentally shifts how we approach our work. When people can't answer "What's in it for me?" or don't understand the business reasons driving the change, their hesitation isn't resistance in the traditional sense. It's a gap in our change approach.

The other reasons people resist follow similar patterns:

• Changes in job roles create concern when people lack desire to adopt new ways of working or feel they've lost autonomy
• Fear of the unknown emerges from uncertainty about the future and past experiences with failed changes
• Lack of support from leaders undermines confidence in the change
• Exclusion from change-related decisions leaves people feeling unheard or blindsided

Each of these causes points to something we can address proactively.

Resistance Prevention Costs Less and Works Better

There are two distinct avenues for addressing resistance to organizational change: Resistance Prevention and Resistance Response. Prevention works to build readiness before barriers take root. Response addresses existing barriers after they appear. Prevention requires less effort, proves more cost-effective, and has a higher potential for success.

This isn't just our perspective. Human-centered design principles emphasize understanding user needs before building solutions. Bridges' transition model shows that people move through predictable stages as they process change. When we design our approach around how people actually experience transition, we prevent many of the barriers that look like resistance.

Effective steps for preventing resistance to organizational include:

• Define success clearly – Connect organizational goals to individual benefits. When people understand what the change will deliver and why it matters, you've addressed the primary cause of resistance before implementation begins.
• Assess readiness early –Identify stakeholders and their potential concerns. This isn't about predicting who will resist—it's about understanding change characteristics that might trigger hesitation so you can build your approach accordingly.
• Build strong sponsorship – Provide the visible support and commitment people need to feel confident in the change. A coalition of sponsors across impacted areas reinforces that message consistently.
• Equip people managers as CLARC leaders – When managers can communicate clearly, serve as liaisons between their teams and the project, advocate for the change, address concerns, and coach individuals through adoption, you've created a support structure that prevents most barriers from becoming significant obstacles.
• Develop targeted communications – Address specific WIIFM concerns for each impacted group. Two-way channels for feedback ensure you're hearing what people need rather than assuming.
• Create participation opportunities – Allow employees to shape solutions where appropriate. This directly addresses one of the five primary causes of resistance. When people contribute to change design and sequencing, they feel heard rather than targeted by decisions made without their input.

Using The ADKAR Model to Diagnose and Respond To Resistance

Even with strong prevention, you'll encounter barriers. People are complex. Organizations are complex. Not every concern surfaces during planning.

When you see behaviors that signal hesitation or opposition, the Prosci ADKAR Model provides your diagnostic framework. Instead of labeling people as resistant, you identify which element presents the barrier:

• Awareness: "Why are we doing this?" needs clearer messaging about the reasons for change
• Desire: "What's in it for me?" needs better understanding of personal impacts and benefits
• Knowledge: "I don't know how" signals a training or guidance gap
• Ability: "I can't make it work" means they need more coaching or practice
• Reinforcement: "Why keep doing this?" indicates missing reinforcement mechanisms

Each barrier requires different interventions. Attempting to address an Awareness barrier with more training wastes everyone's time. Trying to build Desire before establishing Awareness leaves people confused about why you're asking them to support something they don't understand.

The model keeps you focused on root causes rather than symptoms. When mid-level managers show high resistance, as our research indicates they often do, ADKAR helps you understand why. Are they aware of the change and its business drivers? Do they have confidence in their ability to lead their teams through adoption? Have organizational culture issues or past negative experiences undermined their belief that this change will succeed?

For managers specifically, our research identifies five primary resistance causes:

• Organizational culture issues, including risk-averse environments and past negative experiences
• Lack of awareness and knowledge about the change and its ROI
• Lack of support and commitment when managers believe the change is a bad solution or fear losing control
• Misalignment between project goals and personal incentives
• Lack of confidence in their ability to lead the people side of change

Understanding these specific causes allows you to address them systematically rather than treating all manager resistance as a monolithic problem.

Responding Effectively to Resistance During Organizational Change

When you need to respond to existing barriers, focus on behaviors rather than people. Never label individuals as resisters. Describe the specific behaviors you observe and what they might indicate about your change approach.

Listen actively to understand root causes. What you're hearing gives you the information you need to adapt your approach:

• Trying to outlast the change signals people don't believe it's permanent or necessary
• Openly expressed negative emotions might indicate insufficient awareness or desire
• Absenteeism from trainings and meetings could mean knowledge or ability gaps
• Reverting to old ways shows that reinforcement mechanisms aren't strong enough
• Decreased productivity often reflects ability barriers or insufficient support during the learning curve

Each of these behaviors tells you something specific about where to focus your response.

Adapt based on what you learn. Address the specific ADKAR barrier with targeted interventions. Sometimes this means strengthening communications. Sometimes it requires more sponsor visibility. Sometimes it's adjusting timelines or implementation approaches to accommodate real constraints.

Reinforce progress throughout the journey. Celebrate adoption milestones and share success stories that show how addressing concerns improved the change. This builds momentum and demonstrates that feedback creates real adaptation.

When You Encounter Resistance to Organizational Change

The practitioners who excel at responding to and preventing resistance to change share a common practice: they examine their own contribution before attributing barriers to others.

When you encounter resistance, ask yourself:

• Have I actively listened to what people are saying?
• Have I helped sponsors articulate a compelling reason for the change?
• Have I aligned messages with the right senders and ensured those senders feel prepared?
• Have I established genuine feedback loops that allow concerns to surface early?

This isn't about self-blame. It's about recognizing that resistance reveals gaps in our approach. When we see it as diagnostic information rather than an obstacle to overcome, we transform how we work.

The Prosci Methodology sequences conversations deliberately. Define Success, Define Impact, Define Approach build on each other to create a comprehensive change strategy. When followed systematically, each conversation provides input for the next. This structure inherently prevents many barriers because you're building readiness as you develop your approach.

The real work of addressing resistance isn't about converting people or demonstrating consequences. It's about using the ADKAR Model diagnostically, focusing on prevention, engaging people early in the process, and adapting based on what you learn. It's about building feedback loops into your approach from the beginning and responding to what those loops reveal.

Resistance will always be part of change. People need time to process, adapt, and build new capabilities. But when you focus on prevention and use ADKAR to diagnose barriers when they appear, you transform resistance from a threat to your timeline into information that makes your change approach stronger.