Most change management plans are built around a single assumption: if people understand the plan well enough, they will follow it. Communicate clearly, repeat often, and resistance will fade.
It rarely works that way. And there’s research to explain why.
Resistance isn’t one thing
Richard Soparnot’s 2013 study on organisational resistance identified six distinct sources of resistance to change, not one generic “reluctance,” but six separate mechanisms, each requiring a different response:
- Cognitive — people don’t understand what’s changing or why.
- Ideological — the change conflicts with values or convictions people hold.
- Psychological — fear of loss, of incompetence, of the unknown.
- Sociopolitical — the change threatens existing power, status, or informal influence.
- Organisational — structures, processes, or incentives that quietly work against the new direction.
- From the change management approach itself — resistance created by how the change is being led, not by the change itself.
Six sources. Most communication-led change plans only address the first one, sometimes the third. That leaves four sources of resistance completely untouched, which is usually where a transformation quietly stalls, months after the kickoff meeting that everyone applauded.
Why top-down plans plateau
Soparnot’s research draws a clear line: change strategies imposed top-down and communicated at scale defuse, on average, two of the six recognised sources of resistance. Strategies built progressively, with the people concerned, involved in shaping the “how” and not just informed of the “what,” defuse all six.
This isn’t a case for endless consultation or consensus-seeking: that has its own failure modes. It’s a case for a different sequence: instead of designing the change and then explaining it, involve the people who will carry it early enough that the sociopolitical and organisational sources of resistance can be surfaced and addressed before they calcify into quiet non-compliance.
What this looks like in practice
On a recent reorganisation project, the turning point wasn’t a communication plan. It was concrete commitments, made together in workshops, to be delivered between sessions, and actually delivered. Small, dated, visible follow-through, session after session. The result: less absenteeism, more enjoyment at work, and better resolution of the day-to-day tensions that a slide deck can never resolve.
That’s the difference between a plan that gets explained and a plan that gets built. One produces compliance. The other produces the kind of ownership that survives the six months after the launch, when the initial energy has worn off and the real test of a transformation begins.
That’s exactly what we did when we led Poitiers’ and Ivry-sur-Seine’s Reorganisation in 2024: first listening to every voice, then co-construction workshops that allowed a smooth roll-out.
The takeaway
✅ If your transformation feels “well-communicated but not landing,” the diagnosis usually isn’t a communication problem. It’s a resistance problem — and probably four of the six kinds your plan never touched.
- Reference: Soparnot, R. (2013). Les effets des stratégies de changement organisationnel sur la résistance des salariés.
If you wish to be supported, we invite you to schedule a meeting with The Change Society Office.
