[font=Times New Roman]The Law of Reverse Effect & Implementing Change[/font]
The Law of Reverse Effect states “the harder a person consciously attempts to achieve any change to established behavior, the more the subconscious mind automatically resists such attempt.”  The subconscious automatically protects the Status Quo (established behavior) because it has learned that change is bad!  This is the primary reason why employees hate change: their subconscious (based on their personal experience) has convinced them that all change is inherently bad.
Management must realize that the more external pressure is applied to force change, the more resistance is generated by the employees’ subconscious to resist the change.  Rather than trying to force employees to accept changes in the workplace, management needs to defeat The Natural Law of Reverse Effect and get employees to accept and implement meaningful change in the workplace by:
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[li]Overcoming the subconscious’ mind’s resistance to change by giving it powerful positive reasons to accept the change. Resistance to the change will be reduced by eliminating doubts that the change will be beneficial.
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[li]Making the change as easy as possible by creating “user friendly” processes that support the positive reasons for the change.
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[li]Expecting and being prepared to respond to the inevitable pushback to the change (“we have always done it this way!”) by continually explaining why the change is required and the positive aspects of the change.
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[li]Creating a concrete Action Plan with a define timeline, milestones and action steps that eliminates the “trying” factor, which implies the change may not be successful, and creates the “doing” factor to move the change process through resistance to the change.  “Doing” puts the necessary energy into the change process.
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[li]Generate the momentum necessary to defeat the subconscious mind’s resistance by having a respected leader and a group of change advocates implement the Action Plan and sticking to it. [/li]
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There are more steps to any change initiative but why make the change process harder by ignoring The Law of Reverse Effect?