When organizations implement a culture of experimentation, it involves more than just conducting the experiments themselves. There is a larger goal; to create a culture that involves all parts of the organization in experimentation. The transition phase to a culture of experimentation is often accompanied by resistance. Sometimes from individual employees, or even entire departments within a company that are not motivated to change the way they work. What causes this, and what can you do about it?

The success of implementing a new corporate culture depends on all teams and employees within an organization. For a company to innovate, they will need to change their behaviors and habits accordingly. The behavioral change required to do this can often be a cause for resistance. 

Since it is essential that everyone be involved in the process, it is valuable to understand the exact causes of this resistance. Then you can apply this knowledge to minimize the adverse effects. And thus, with less resistance, implement a successful experimentation culture. 

There are two main factors (Bovill, 2015) that play a role in creating resistance when innovating within organizations:

1. People are stuck in their old habits;

2. The intended innovation is perceived as risky.

Old habits die hard

The success of implementing a culture of experimentation depends on all employees within an organization. Therefore, it is important to immediately make everyone part of the process. 

However, starting experiments does not require the same commitment from everyone. To set up a good experiment, certain areas of expertise require more than just their participation. For experts such as designers, analysts or developers, different skills are actually expected. As a result, the habits they have acquired over a long period of time will not always fit the new culture of the organization. They will have to make an effort to learn these new skills and, in other cases, change habits to match the organization's changing priorities. How do you deal with the resistance this can create?

Taking risks is scary

The second factor that has a major impact on resistance to innovation is uncertainty about the unknown. This creates the fear that there may be insufficient guidance for the changes taking place. 

How do you deal with these sources of resistance?

1. Clear communication

Clearly communicating the goals of the process, the desired outcomes and the role of the teams within the organization ensures that the right people can participate with the right expectations (Salas, 2012). Whereas resistance often manifests as unwillingness and passivity, the underlying reason may actually be uncertainty. 

The expectations people have about learning new skills can have a great deal of influence on the effectiveness of the learning process. An expert must adapt his own process for the benefit of the shared experimentation goals. This involves other skills and therefore takes extra energy to learn. When the expectations of this learning process are clear, participants are more motivated and committed. 

This effect is even stronger if managers of the teams also make clear the importance of the learning process and the intended results of experimentation. 

2. Goals and Tools

Especially with people who experience more resistance, pursuing the organization's goals sometimes does not work sufficiently motivating. Nevertheless, it is very important to involve them in the process. By letting them set their own personal learning goals, they become more owners of the learning process (Smith, 2005) and also become more involved in the culture of experimentation.

3. Fail-learn culture

If people perceive implementing a culture of experimentation as risky, it is valuable to make it clear that they are part of a process where mistakes are allowed to be made.

Thus, an organization's culture of experimentation is applied not only within experimentation itself, but also while implementing the new culture in a CRO team. With the application of a experimentation mindset the learning process of individual team members is facilitated. Confidence in the new way of working must be built gradually, and recognizing the challenges of the process helps to overcome them one by one.

Resources

Bovill, C., Cook-Sather, A., Felten, P., Millard, L., and Moore-Cherry, N. (2015) Addressing potential challenges in co-creating learning and teaching: overcoming resistance, navigating institutional norms and ensuring inclusivity in student-staff partnerships.

Smith, I. (2005). Continuing professional development and workplace learning 13: Resistance to change-recognition and response. Library Management.

Salas, E., Tannenbaum, S. I., Kraiger, K., & Smith-Jentsch, K. A. (2012). The science of
Training and development in organizations: What matters in practice.
Psychological science in the public interest, 13(2), 74-101.