The Day I Resisted Change cover image
Organizational Development

The Day I Resisted Change

Fore score and twenty years ago, I had a change inflicted on me. And I didn't like it. Here's 6 ideas the 'change people' could have used to avoid my resistance.

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Jason Little
Oct 15, 2021 • 4 min read
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Resistance to Change
Managing Change
Organizational Change Management
Responding to Change
Autonomy
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Summary

Jason Little, an image and ringtone developer in the early 2000s describes how he resisted an organizational change inflicted by the QA manager while working as the production lead, which had intended to test every piece of ringtone and image to be produced. According to him, this was unbelievably insane as the numbers were vast and would consume a lot of time to get it done. Instead, he decided to pass stuff to production without the consent of the QA manager and they later came to a consensus that it was challenging to test every piece to be launched into production. Jason then suggest six ideas that the organization could have followed to mitigate employee change resistance.

Takeaways

  • As change agents, we often forget what it's like to have change inflicted on us.
  • In 2001 it wasn’t uncommon to have to create an 8,000-byte image, not an 8-K image for some phones. Developers had to create 30+ versions of images and ringtones depending on the capabilities of each phone.
  • Jason Little, then working as an image and ringtone developer, resists a change implemented by the organization intended to test all the pieces before being launched to production as he deemed it insane to test every piece of content to be produced.
  • The cost of testing every combination on every phone in the early 2000s was astronomical and time-consuming.

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