The Costs and Risks of Resistance to Change

If we take the position that resistance to change is unavoidable and complex and choose not to address it directly, we will pay a price in terms of change outcomes and ultimately benefits realization. Resistance has been identified as a top obstacle to successful change in all of Prosci’s best practices benchmarking studies. Study participants identified the following costs of resistance:

• Project delays
• Outcomes or objectives not achieved
• Project abandoned
• Productivity declines
• Absenteeism
• Loss of valued employees
• Extra costs and risk
• Inefficiencies
• History of failed change

Resistance has costs – it is not free. And, in order to avoid these costs and the potential risks to a project or change initiative, we must develop a planned and intentional approach to manage resistance to change.