Do you like people to tell you what to do? Do you like your freedoms taken away by others? Do you really enjoy someone limiting your choices?
My guess is probably not.
When you make rules for others, this is exactly what you are doing. Even if it is “for their own good,” the more rules you have, the more freedoms you have removed. For this reason, when we make rules or set process, we need to understand that no matter how well we explain these new rules – no matter how great the buy-in from others in the group – there will be those that resent or break those rules.
When you set a rule, people ask two questions:
(1) What is the minimum amount I need to do to not break this rule
(2) What is the easiest way for me to not follow this rule at all?
This is due to Reactance – which is a tendency in people to push back against reductions in perceived or real freedoms. The more the new rule is unexplained, unexpected, or disruptive, the more reactance you will encounter.
Most organizational change or processes come with outside rules that actively and immediately engage reactance behaviors. People don’t like being controlled. You don’t, I don’t … no one does.
What people do like is clarity. A law we willingly follow does not limit our freedoms by fiat. It merely becomes a cultural norm that supports our preferred way of life. If we have clarity over the work we are doing, what our team members are doing, and how we fit into the production of value – we’ll likely need less rules to control our behavior. Less rules mean less reactance.
This does not mean structure should be abandoned, it means that our approach to rule making needs to be examined. Collaborative creation of rules, of process, and of the rate of change is required for healthy rule creation and adoption.
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To quickly turn that on its head … in the software world I have seen IT groups and development groups adopt much-needed and healthy agile methodologies and the rest of the organization engage in reactance behavior as the techies approached them and said, “Our new process means you have to follow these new rules.” Since they were not involved in the decision for agile migration, or see themselves as direct beneficiaries of the new rules, they push back.
Photo by Tonianne
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