Breaking the Silent Resistance: Why Change Initiatives Need More Than Perfect Plans
- 04 December 2025
- Organisational Development
- Academy for Organisational Change
Breaking the Silent Resistance: Why Change Initiatives Need More Than Perfect Plans
In the landscape of organizational transformation, a troubling pattern persists: meticulously designed turnaround strategies that collapse during execution. Recent research by Khonjelwayo and Ellenson (2024) reveals that organizations consistently face resistance when implementing turnaround strategies, often because change management and employee engagement are treated as separate initiatives rather than integrated components.
The Engagement Gap in Change Management
The traditional approach to organizational turnaround often follows a predictable script: leadership develops a strategy, announces the changes, and expects implementation to follow. Yet this linear model consistently underestimates a critical factor—the human dimension of change.
The research emphasizes that employee engagement manifests through physical, cognitive, and emotional levels in workplace performance. When organizations fail to address all three dimensions, they encounter what might be called "silent resistance"—employees who comply outwardly but withhold the discretionary effort essential for transformation success.
Moving Beyond Superficial Consultation
One of the most striking findings is how often organizations mistake information-sharing for genuine engagement. Town halls, email updates, and Q&A sessions create an illusion of participation while failing to generate the psychological buy-in necessary for sustained change.
The study recommends a blended approach that includes employer consultation and employee participation, facilitation, negotiation and agreement as key components of effective organizational turnaround strategy. This isn't about giving employees veto power over strategic decisions; it's about creating genuine dialogue that acknowledges their concerns and incorporates their insights.
The Strategic Imperative of Engagement
Successful change management enables employees to accept new vision, behavior, and culture, ultimately determining an organization's survival, development, and strategic direction. This positions engagement not as a "nice-to-have" element of change management but as a fundamental determinant of success.
Consider the practical implications:
- Financial turnarounds require employees to identify cost-saving opportunities they might otherwise overlook
- Digital transformations depend on users adopting new technologies enthusiastically rather than grudgingly
- Cultural shifts succeed only when employees embody new values in daily interactions
Building a Blended Approach
The research suggests that facilitation, negotiation, and agreement help organizational leadership deal with possible resistance by addressing emotional and material concerns that emerge during the change process. This requires a fundamental shift in how leaders approach transformation:
- From Announcement to Dialogue: Replace one-way communication with structured conversations that capture employee perspectives before finalizing implementation plans.
- From Compliance to Co-creation: Involve employees in designing how changes will be implemented in their specific contexts, leveraging their operational knowledge.
- From Timeline-Driven to Trust-Building: Recognize that generating genuine buy-in may initially slow the process but ultimately accelerates successful implementation.
- From Top-Down to Multi-Directional: Create feedback loops that allow real-time adjustments based on ground-level insights.
The Path Forward
Organizations facing turnaround situations don't have the luxury of learning these lessons through trial and error. The stakes are too high, and the window for action too narrow. The simultaneous integration of change management and employee engagement offers a pathway for global organizations to execute effective turnaround strategies.
For organizational development practitioners, this research reinforces a crucial principle: technical excellence in strategy design means little without equal attention to the human systems that must bring those strategies to life. The organizations that thrive through transformation will be those that recognize engagement not as a parallel track to change management, but as its very foundation.
The message is clear: in an era of constant disruption, the ability to mobilize human commitment alongside strategic planning isn't just good practice—it's an existential necessity for organizational survival.
Source: Khonjelwayo, M., & Ellenson, T. (2024). Change management and employee engagement as a possible turn around strategy. International Journal of Research in Business and Social Science. (www.ssbfnet.com/ojs/index.php/ijrbs/article/view/3681)
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