Resistance Analysis

When people push back against a new technology at work, the easy explanation is almost always wrong.

A school rolls out a new platform, or a company adopts a new AI tool, and some of the staff complain loudly, some drag their feet, some openly refuse to use the thing. The leaders pushing the change usually reach for one of two explanations. Either the resisters are afraid of change in general, which is a polite way of saying they are old, or they do not understand the technology properly, which is a polite way of saying they are not clever enough. Both explanations flatter the people making the change and let them get on with the rollout without engaging with the actual content of the objection. Both are, most of the time, wrong.

When you sit down and actually listen to experienced teachers or skilled workers who are resisting a new system, you tend to hear something quite different. They have seen enough rollouts to know that the promised time savings rarely arrive. They have noticed that the new tool is optimised for measurement rather than for the craft they have spent their careers refining. They have picked up, often correctly, that the tool is being introduced partly because management wants more visibility into their work, not purely because it will make the work better. They are not afraid of technology. They are making a considered judgement that this particular change, in this particular form, is not going to do what its sponsors are claiming. Treating that as irrational resistance instead of as potentially correct feedback is how organisations keep implementing expensive things that quietly fail. When someone senior and experienced at your workplace pushed back against a change, how much of their objection turned out, in hindsight, to have been right?

Last week we looked at safety checks that quietly stop checking. This week we look at the people who push back against new technology at work, and at why they are often more right than the leaders pushing it.