takeaway from business school: alliance, compliance, defiance

the takeaway (the word "takeaway," which means the information you take away from a meeting, including a class, or a book, or any other experience, itself having been a takeaway from a class) from Managing Teams class last week (not last night, but last week, for those playing along at home, as David Letterman might say, which I believe is a joke, but the possibility does exist that there is a David Letterman bingo card and some viewer might really be eagerly hanging on his words with their next tiddle poised between thumb and forefinger, in their precision grip -- Homo Sapiens' secret weapon -- waiting to place it on their card) was that responses to change can be grouped in three general categories, which, like all of these b-school maxims, alliterates or rhymes in a mnemonic way. The three responses are Alliance, Compliance, and Defiance. When bringing a change, the allies are those who are themselves in favor of the change, the compliant are those who will go along with the change, and the defiant are those who will resist the change. (Furthermore, to actually happen, a project needs at least one powerful sponsor allied with it)

Furthermore, the proper response to the defiant group is to ignore them. Instead of wasting your energy arguing with them. That was the big takeaway.

previous - next