Do you know the feeling of being the driver for change but meet resistance everywhere along the way? It’s an annoying situation to be in, so here I wanted to give some perspective on the stereotypical situation and what we can learn from it. While this post uses Tableau examples, the point I am trying to make applies to all areas, professional or personal.

What do pizza delivery apps, office printers and Tableau have in common?

For me, they are all three representations of change that is often met with resistance.

• When I did my very first internship in school, the company I worked at was ideating a platform to order pizza online. At the time, I just discarded the idea, why would anybody order a pizza from their phone when calling was so easy? Nobody would do that!

• When I did my apprenticeship, I worked on a project to replace the printers in our office. Part of the project was having some test devices in the office for users to be able to give feedback.One of the biggest problems was that the printers didn’t have individual trays any more where people could print into, they had to actually go to the printer and start the print job with their card. How inconvenient, can anybody imagine doing this?

• Lastly Tableau, why would anybody look at data in chart form in lieu of a huge excel sheet with record level data? How could anybody trust the data or apply all these manual adjustments that every business operates on?

Just three examples where I – or others – were somewhat resistant to change, because we were so used to how things had been, that we could not fathom a world where things are done differently.

Talking to other professionals – mostly in the data space and often consultants – this problem is well known and everybody seems to struggle with users demonstrating exactly this mindset. It’s frustrating and dealing with it requires special skills since – usually – the people opposing change tend to be not very receptive to arguments.

The pattern is always very similar and I am sure most of us will recognise it:

Before the change

Tableau is too complex! I’m perfectly fine using Excel! How do we get to manually adjust our figures now?

We – who have a vision in mind – can see how resisting the change will often make things worse, either directly by letting an existing situation get worse or indirectly by just stagnating and not keeping up with everybody else. What’s important for a user is how something impacts them on a daily basis, they don’t care about the benefit for their neighbour or the organisation as a whole. Seeing the bigger picture and understanding that no change might end up being worse for them in the long run often requires additional information that they might not have.

During the change

I was able to do X easily in Excel, now I cannot do that any more! The UI is confusing! There is no conditional formatting in Tableau!

At any point, people will point out flaws, shortcomings and disadvantages of the change. These are most often perceived, based on a lack of knowledge of the new tool or process, sometimes justified. Since the users oppose the change, anything  – even the smallest instance – will be interpreted in the most negative way possible. Their point is clear: it has been better in the past and any change is for the worse. Any benefit, time savings, efficiencies are either not seen or willingly ignored. While this often starts out as constructive criticism that should be listened to, over time it can easily morph into complaints that are mainly voiced to make a point.

After the change

I need to remember a new password! The default colours are ugly! I cannot easily do a gauge chart!

Users will not get tired of highlighting how their daily life changed for the worse. Anything that could be interpreted as additional friction will be reiterated again and again, highlighting how wrong the decision for change was in the first place. Usually only a few of them will seriously consider what no change would have meant long term. The fact that they might need to slightly adjust their behaviour to take full advantage of the change will also be met with resistance, why would a user themselves do something differently if it has been done that way successfully for years prior?

At the same time

There is a group of people that starts emerging and growing during and after the change who embrace it. Those are the ones we tend to connect and work with, they become super users and internal champions, carving out a better position for themselves. Some of them will be people who accept or embrace the change, but more notably, there will be new users, people who consider the current situation the status quo because they haven’t experienced the situation pre-change. They just go on with their lives, utilise the tools to the best of their abilities, upskill and eventually overtake the existing user base who keeps pushing back.

For most of them it’s not that changing is easier, it is just that they haven’t actually experienced the change. In fact, the same users may be in the exact same position just a little while later when something they are used to starts to change.

What about you?

I think many of us have experienced similar situations in the past and they might have annoyed us. You might have been part of a group somewhere in a pub after a conference, ranting about one of your client engagements and how so many clients “just don’t get it”.

To those of you and everybody else who is reading this, I want to ask you one question:

Have you taken a step back and considered your own reaction to change? 

How do (or did) you react when:

• Your favourite shop closed doors?
• Your best friend’s family decided to move away?
• Your client decided to go with a different tool?
• Your tech tool of choice was acquired by a larger company?

It’s easy to point to others and complain how they “just don’t get it” but it is much harder to reconsider one’s own position and honestly evaluate where criticism comes from, which criticism is justified and when the criticism becomes complaints that might quickly be perceived as noise.

Constructive criticism can help to make the change smoother and more useful for everybody, but being the squeaky wheel by complaining about everything equally will not improve the situation; on the contrary, the “Changers” might be more likely to ignore the complaints because they cannot be satisfied anyway. 

If we are honest with ourselves, I am sure we can all identify situations in which we have been (or still are) that user. Where we just oppose everything because we don’t like it. Maybe it’s long ago and with the benefit of hindsight you realised that it was for the better or if it wasn’t you eventually accepted the change and made the best of it. Maybe you are still opposing something that is changing because you liked it better how it was before.

There are two things I think we all should keep in mind:

Nobody is immune to change. Just because you tend to drive change, doesn’t mean you embrace it in all forms.

Reflecting is key. No matter on what end of the change you are, honestly reflecting on your actions and how they could be perceived by the other side is important.

If we keep this in mind I think we have a much better chance to deal with resistant users and adapt to change ourselves.

Don’t be like me, discard the idea of a pizza delivery app prematurely and complain that you’ll now need to figure out how to navigate a new app, you might just not have the same information as the people who implement the change. And you might miss out on the opportunity to be part of something new.

Featured Image: Javier Allegue Barros