Don’t focus on the people fighting change

When it comes to change initiatives, there will always people that resist and they will more often than not take an over proportional share of voice. This triggers a lot of focus on this group of people to convince them.

In my experience this is the wrong approach. In every larger group of people you will find a statistical normal distribution of people – also with respect to their attitude towards change:

😀 Missionaries: A minority (5%) will be absolutely positive and will proactively support you
🙂 Supporters: Some more (10%) will have a positive stance towards the change
🤔 Neutrals: The vast majority (70%) will be neutral and wait what comes next
🙁 The Anxious: Some (10%) will be not happy about the change and have fears
😠 Resistors: Only very few (5%) will be angry and actively resist

Apart from the two minorities on the extreme ends, people will not unsolicitedly share their opinion. Yet, we focus on the negative minority with the aim to convince them.

However, it is much more important to leverage the energy or the positive people and combine it with a good change management measures to convince the neutral majority. Because once we have convinced the majority, the active resistors will feel that they are a minority – and either shut up or leave.

A good communication strategy should address all of the 5 groups above with messages, because else, the group of people not addressed will feel left out or forgotten.

In change communication, always check whether you have messages for all of these 5 groups.

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