“I’ll do it, but not because you told me to!”
A sentence not uncommon to people with teenagers at home.
This rebel-without-a-cause-attitude translates to all of us at times. In general, people don’t like being told what to do. Whether it's getting people back to the office again, or the use of new technology – leading and managing people often entails getting them to do things they are reluctant to do.
As established already, people rarely enjoy being bossed around. Change must be implemented slowly – allow for employees to get used to new policies. Make sure that you’re not asking somebody to commit to something the first time they hear it. The more frequently people hear about something, the more open to it they will be. In this way, strange new ideas have time to become more familiar to your audience.
Don't flip a switch and implement new ideas from one day to the next. Most of us are more willing to agree to an unfamiliar idea when it doesn’t feel like the commitment is indefinite. Framing new policies as experiments, which are evaluated over a set time frame might help. Agree upon success criteria. If it works after six months, continue. If not, try again.
In general, dissecting problems to their core frictions will serve you well. Many organizations will have to think about and evaluate sources of friction frequently as almost everything is going to be a “new idea” every six months in times like today. A successful change implementation comes down not so much to the new idea, but rather how it is introduced to an audience whose context is constantly changing.
