Integrating IoT Devices in Business

Most technology failures are emotional, but reported as operational. There is a convenient explanation we tell ourselves: "People resist change because they are stubborn". But that's rarely true. People resist change when the emotional cost is higher than the promised benefit. Many well-designed platforms are rejected for the uncertainty they introduce, not for technical flaws. 🔸If this becomes automated, where is my expertise valued? 🔸If this makes things transparent, what happens to my influence? 🔸If this removes bottlenecks, what happens to my control? Pre-COVID, I watched an analytics transformation collapse. The dashboards worked. The data was accurate. The vendor delivered exactly what was promised What killed it was simpler.... and harder to admit. Some stakeholders realised the system would expose how little work their teams were actually producing. Such concerns never appeared in the project report. They surfaced elsewhere - hallway conversations, quiet compliance, polite underperformance.  This is the terrain many transformations underestimate. Technology does not replace organisational psychology. It collides with it. 🔹Adoption can be mandated. Belief cannot. 🔹Usage can be tracked. Quiet resentment rarely registers on a dashboard. When a system unsettles certainty, status, or belonging, the challenge is no longer technical. It becomes emotional debt And emotional debt compounds silently. Which is why resistance is often not created by technology. It is exposed by it. A question worth asking before the next major digital rollout: "Are we ready to hold the conversations this system will force us to have?" And that’s how we rise above noise - by choosing what matters next. Let’s go beyond noise 💡 Before approving a plan, ask what truth will this system force us to confront? And are we ready for that conversation? === I’m Dr. Adam Chee 🍎, a practitioner professor guiding leaders through digital noise to co-create a future of work that stays deeply human.   Do "Like", and/or Repost if the content resonates with you (it helps distribute the sharing). === #GBNHumanTech #GoBeyondNoise

She called our AI "A toaster that will steal my job." Ten-year veteran. Top producer. When we announced AI deployment, she was our loudest skeptic. I didn't dismiss her fear. I listened. Here's what we did differently: We didn't force AI on anyone. We started with volunteers. The enthusiasts who wanted to try it first. We documented their wins. She watched her colleague compress 17-minute rate calls to 2 minutes. More time for actual customer conversations. No job losses. Then we asked her to pilot it on just one of her web properties. Low risk. Her choice. She saw the results. AI handled the grunt work. She had more time for complex cases. Her commissions went up, not down. Today? She trains new hires on AI. She's our strongest champion. Your team has four types of AI adopters: ➜ Enthusiasts (10%): Already onboard. ➜ Pragmatists (40%): Waiting for proof. ➜ Skeptics (40%): Actively resisting. ➜ Saboteurs (10%): Undermining everything. Most leaders try to force adoption. That creates more resistance. The better approach? Lead with empathy, not force. Start with volunteers. Show quick wins. Listen to fears, don't dismiss them. Your biggest resistors become your strongest champions when you lead them through the fear, not around it. ▶ Full framework: https://lnkd.in/gjrPtKuV #AIForwardLeadership #ChangeManagement #Leadership #AI #TeamTransformation

Most resistance doesn’t start with your team: It starts with you. Not intentionally. But through small, well-meaning behaviors that accidentally signal threat. You’re trying to lead change. But you’re unknowingly creating the resistance you’re fighting. ❌ Explaining the strategy but ignoring the human impact You focus on the business case. The roadmap. The benefits. But people are silently asking: What does this mean for my role? My expertise? My value? When that question goes unanswered, resistance fills the gap. ❌ Moving too fast without creating stability Urgency is necessary. But when everything feels in motion at once, people lose their footing. ❌ Treating silence as agreement A quiet room feels like alignment. In reality, it often signals withdrawal. ❌ Increasing oversight the moment things feel uncertain When you feel pressure, control increases. More approvals. More status updates. More checkpoints. ❌ Overloading people with information More communication doesn’t create more clarity. Long presentations and constant updates overwhelm. What people need is simple, repeated clarity. Not volume. ❌ Avoiding difficult conversations You sidestep discomfort to keep momentum. But unaddressed concerns don’t disappear. They move into hallways, Slack threads, and quiet skepticism. ❌ Assuming understanding equals commitment People understand the change. That doesn’t mean they support it. Adoption requires emotional alignment, not just intellectual agreement. 8. Ignoring the competence dip Every major change creates a temporary drop in confidence. When you overlook this, people interpret struggle as personal failure. ❌ Changing too many things at once When priorities constantly shift, teams assume the change won’t last. Frequent resets weaken credibility and reinforce skepticism. ❌ Failing to recognize early warning signals Resistance rarely appears dramatically. It shows up as slower decisions. Quieter meetings. Reduced initiative. When these signals go unnoticed, resistance solidifies. You’re not creating resistance on purpose. But if you’re doing any of these, you’re creating it accidentally. The good news? Awareness changes behavior. And behavior changes outcomes. Want to learn how to lead change without accidentally fueling the resistance you’re trying to overcome? Download “The Hidden Landscape of Resistance” at freebook.sarajunio.com Free guide. Real patterns. Built for leaders who want to get out of their own way.

I was hired to “fix resistance.” That was the actual language in the brief. New systems. New workflows. New expectations. Leadership wanted people “on board.” My role? Help them stop pushing back. At first, we treated resistance like a problem to be solved: Town halls. FAQs. Training sessions. Carefully crafted messages. And yes, we heard all the familiar lines: “Here we go again.” “This won’t last.” “You’re asking us to do more with less… again.” “You say ‘empowerment,’ but it feels like control.” The instinct was to label it: resistant, negative, change-averse. But the same people pushing back were also: The ones who stayed late when things went wrong. The ones others turned to when they needed help. The ones quietly holding the organization together on its hardest days. That mismatch bothered me. That was the pivot point. We stopped asking, “How do we reduce resistance?” We started asking, “What are people trying to protect when they resist?” When we listened through that lens, resistance looked very different: Some were protecting quality from unrealistic timelines. Some were protecting trust from one more promise that wouldn’t be kept. Some were protecting dignity from being monitored instead of supported. Some were protecting capacity from initiatives that added workload but removed nothing. So we changed how we led the change: Invited the strongest critics in early as co-designers, not late as “barriers.” Made it explicit: every major change had to remove or simplify something, not just add. Built mechanisms to raise “red flags” when risks appeared without fear of being labeled difficult. Committed publicly to altering plans based on what we heard, not just “taking feedback onboard.” If you’re leading transformation right now, here’s the uncomfortable truth: What you call “resistance” is often free risk analysis. The people slowing you down are often preventing bigger failure. Every objection is data about the gap between your story and their reality. Before you design another tactic to “overcome resistance”: Invite your toughest critics into the room first, not last. Ask them: “What are you trying to protect when you push back on this?” Treat every objection as a signal, not a character flaw. Decide in advance which parts of your plan you’re willing to change based on what they tell you and say that out loud. If you treat resistance as the enemy, you’ll spend your energy fighting the very people who could make your change safer and smarter. If you treat it as intelligence, you’ll discover your fiercest challengers can become your most trusted allies. What’s one “resistant” voice in your world right now that might actually improve the way you’re leading change?

New tech rarely dies in testing. It dies when real people have to use it. The pilot works. The demo lands. The use case makes sense. And still, it never scales. Why? Adoption measures behavior. And behavior is where the brain gets involved. Here’s the neural map to getting past the pilot phase: 👇 1️⃣ Don’t assume a successful pilot means people are ready Do this: ↳ Design for behavior change, not just proof of concept The science: ↳ The brain can like an idea and still resist changing routines ↳ The basal ganglia prefers familiar patterns over new effort 2️⃣ Don’t lead with technical performance Do this: ↳ Lead with what gets easier, safer, or faster for the user The science: ↳ The brain scans for personal relevance first ↳ If value doesn’t feel immediate, attention drops 3️⃣ Don’t ignore the fear underneath adoption Do this: ↳ Surface and reduce the emotional risk of using the tech The science: ↳ New tools can trigger fear of failure, exposure, or replacement ↳ People protect status before they embrace change 4️⃣ Don’t make the new workflow feel too different Do this: ↳ Anchor adoption to behaviors users already know The science: ↳ The brain prefers familiarity and predictability ↳ High perceived effort creates resistance fast 5️⃣ Don’t treat training like a side task Do this: ↳ Make training simple, repeated, and tied to real use moments The science: ↳ The brain learns through repetition and reward ↳ Memory strengthens when learning is applied in context 6️⃣ Don’t overload users with too much information Do this: ↳ Simplify the message and narrow the actions The science: ↳ Working memory is limited ↳ Cognitive overload reduces confidence and follow-through 7️⃣ Don’t assume logic will override politics Do this: ↳ Make adoption feel safe socially and professionally The science: ↳ Social pain lights up many of the same brain regions as physical pain ↳ If adoption feels politically dangerous, scale dies 8️⃣ Don’t make the first experience slow or clunky Do this: ↳ Create a fast first win users can feel The science: ↳ Early wins create dopamine ↳ If the first experience feels frustrating, the brain tags it as costly 9️⃣ Don’t leave the middle managers out Do this: ↳ Equip frontline leaders to reinforce the change daily The science: ↳ The brain looks to authority and peer behavior for safety cues ↳ Local managers shape whether a new behavior feels normal 🔟 Don’t stop at proving the tech works Do this: ↳ Prove people can adopt it consistently under real conditions The science: ↳ The brain trusts repeatability more than novelty ↳ Scale requires lower friction, lower threat, and clearer reward P.S. What's the last pilot you saw fail? ➡️ If your new tech is getting interest but still not making it past pilot, try this --> https://lnkd.in/gvZNBKq9 -------------------------------------------------------------------- ♻️ Share this with a founder building new tech ➕ Follow Shannon for more brain-based GTM tactics

A directive came from leadership: “Everyone is now using AI.” Many in the company didn't change a thing. That's what happens when executives mandate AI tools instead of earning adoption. McKinsey has tracked transformation failures for decades. The conclusion hasn't changed: 70% of change initiatives fail. Employee resistance is the most common reason. Yet when tool adoption stalls, most executive responses look exactly the same: → write a stronger memo → set a harder deadline → make it mandatory The strategy is the same one that's been failing for decades. Here's what kills AI tool adoption and what works: 1/ You Created Compliance, Not Capability People use the tool enough to avoid trouble. They never use it enough to create value. Adoption metrics look fine. ROI never materializes. Reality: Gartner found only 38% of employees are willing to support organizational change today, down from 74% in 2016. 2/ You Told Them What, Not Why "We're moving to [tool]" is not a change strategy. People fill the vacuum with fear. Anxiety drives avoidance. Reality: Organizations are 3.5x more likely to succeed when leaders communicate outcomes before launching solutions. 3/ You skipped the pilot Full-organization rollouts collapse under the weight of edge cases. No feedback loop before the stakes are high. A loud failure poisons future adoption efforts. Reality: Companies are 3x more likely to succeed when they use piloting and prototyping to identify skill gaps. 4/ You chose champions, not skeptics Early adopters sell it to true believers. Skeptics aren’t persuaded, they’re overruled. The mandate hardens their resistance. Reality: Your critics, converted, become your most credible advocates. 5/ Training was a one-day event A 90-minute demo is not adoption. People default to old habits under pressure. New tools feel harder until they feel natural. Reality: Embedded coaching and workflow integration matter more than onboarding sessions. 6/ Middle management was left out Executives announce it. Managers determine if it actually happens. Adoption dies in the layer between the announcement and the work. Reality: McKinsey attributes 72% of transformation failures to inadequate management support. 7/ You measured deployment, not depth “90% of users logged in” is not adoption. Reality: The difference between a technology investment and a technology return is depth of use. What works instead: → Identify champions from mid-level teams, not just the executive floor → Tie tool use to outcomes people already care about → Measure depth of use, not just activation rate → Give managers a how, not just a what → Anchor adoption to performance reviews Zapier drove 97% company-wide AI adoption through hackathons & peer show-and-tells, not mandates. That gap between pilot and production is a people problem executives keep trying to solve with authority. Authority creates compliance. Engagement creates adoption. Save for future reference.

Eight of the last ten transformation programs I've reviewed were described as having a "resistance" problem. In every single one of them, when I sat down with the people supposedly resisting, what I found wasn't resistance. It was a specific cost the leadership team hadn't accounted for and wasn't paying. Sometimes the cost was time. The new process took longer than the old one in the first few weeks, and people quietly reached for what they already knew under deadline pressure. Sometimes it was cognitive. Too much new behavior asked of the same teams in the same quarter, and the brain reaches for what's automatic. Sometimes it was social. The cost of fumbling the new behavior in front of colleagues felt higher than the cost of avoiding it entirely. And sometimes it was identity. The change asked someone to stop being the expert they'd spent fifteen years becoming, and the pushback had nothing to do with the change itself. None of those are resistance in the way the word usually gets used. They're rational responses to a cost structure the program never priced in. The framing matters because it changes who has to do the work. If the diagnosis is resistance, the work falls on the people: more training and more comms. If the diagnosis is unpriced cost, the work falls on the leadership team. Different problems with different success rates. The next time a rollout looks "stuck on adoption," the more useful question isn't how to overcome the resistance. It's which of the four costs you haven't been paying. ➕ Follow Ashley Munday for insights on leadership, vital teams, and how to turn strategy into coordinated action.

"Resistance to change" is one of the most dangerous phrases in business. Not because it's wrong. Because it's lazy. When employees push back on a transformation, we reach for that phrase like a reflex. "They're resistant." "People fear change." "We need more communication to overcome resistance." Here's what's actually happening most of the time: employees are diagnosing problems that leadership hasn't seen yet. The team that won't adopt the new system? They've already figured out it doesn't match their actual workflow. The middle managers dragging their feet? They can see the contradiction between what you're saying and what you're measuring. The "resisters" on the front line? They're doing sophisticated analysis of whether this change will actually work, in real time, with better data than the executive team has. But orthodox change management doesn't have a category for that. It has "resistance" and "adoption curves" and tools for overcoming pushback. It has no tools for listening. So what happens? The diagnostic feedback gets pathologized. Employees who point out real problems get labeled resisters. Their concerns get addressed with more communication, which usually just means more repetition of the same message they already heard and found unconvincing. This creates a vicious cycle. Employees see their concerns aren't being heard. They conclude leadership isn't interested in reality, only in executing a predetermined plan. Trust erodes. People stop surfacing problems because it doesn't help and might hurt their career. The change proceeds with less intelligence than it started with. I watched this play out at a national healthcare network. Leadership rolled out a new digital intake system. Nurses pushed back. The executive sponsor called it "classic resistance" and ordered more training. One regional director quietly ran listening sessions instead. She asked staff to walk her through a typical day. What emerged wasn't fear of change. It was diagnosis. The system required triple data entry, broke integration with patient records, and delayed triage during peak hours. They paused the rollout. Embedded frontline staff in the redesign. Within three months, error rates dropped 40%. The so-called "resisters" saved the project. The shift from "overcoming resistance" to "harvesting intelligence" is one of the most powerful moves a leader can make. It changes who speaks up, what information surfaces, and how fast you can adapt when reality diverges from the plan. Most organizations never make that shift. They'd rather blame the humans than question the plan.

People don't resist change. They resist being changed. There's a difference — and once you see it, you can't unsee it. I've gone through transformations across a dozen organizations. New tech stacks. AI adoption. Team restructures. The pattern is always the same: the people who push back hardest aren't afraid of the future. They're reacting to how the change is being done to them. Here's what actually works: Give context before direction. Tell people why the current state is unsustainable before you tell them what's changing. If they don't understand the "why," every "what" feels arbitrary. Make them part of the diagnosis. The moment you ask "what's broken in your world right now?" you've shifted someone from passenger to co-pilot. People can tell the difference between being consulted and being handled. Protect their identity through the transition. Most resistance is really this question: "If this new way is better, what does that say about what I've been doing?" Acknowledge their prior contributions explicitly. Transformation isn't a communication problem. It's a trust problem dressed up as one. When people feel seen, informed, and genuinely involved — they stop resisting and start building. #Leadership, #ChangeManagement #FractionalCTO, #CTOInsights, #EngineeringLeadership

Stop announcing change.  Start engineering it.  There's a massive difference and 7 models that prove it. Most leaders treat change as an event.  It's not. It's a system. And every system needs the right framework  - applied at the right time, to the right problem. Here's when to deploy each model: Stuck at the individual level? → Use ADKAR. Diagnose exactly where people stall  - Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, or Reinforcement.  One blocked stage kills the whole rollout. Need company-wide momentum? → Use Kotter's 8-Step. Create urgency first. Coalition second.  Vision third. Skip the sequence; lose the transformation. Culture shift that needs time to stick? → Use Lewin's 3-Stage.  Unfreeze. Change. Refreeze.  Simple - but most leaders skip the refreeze  and wonder why change doesn't hold. Behavior won't budge? → Use McKinsey's Influence Model.  Real behavior change requires four simultaneous levers:  role modeling, conviction, reinforcement, and skills.  Pull only one; people revert. Misalignment between teams? → Use Prosci PCT.  Leadership, Change Management,  and Project Management must move in lockstep.  A gap in any corner collapses the triangle. Facing resistance? → Use Nudge Theory. Don't mandate.  Design low-friction pathways.  Present change as a choice, remove adoption barriers,  celebrate early wins loudly. Enterprise-wide transformation? → Use BCG's Change Delta.  Enabled leaders + executional certainty + an engaged organization  - all governed by a disciplined PMO. This is change at scale. The insight most executives miss: These models aren't competitors. They're complementary. The best transformation leaders layer them  - ADKAR at the individual level,  Kotter for the organizational drumbeat,  McKinsey to hardwire behavior. Your actionable takeaway: Before your next initiative, ask three questions: Where is resistance living  - individual, team, or cultural? What phase are we in  - launching, sustaining, or embedding? Which model matches this problem  - not the last one you solved? The right framework at the right moment isn't a nice-to-have.  It's the difference between transformation and expensive noise. Which change model has delivered real results in your organization  and which one looked good on paper but failed in practice? Let's make this thread a real-world resource. Drop your experience below. Repost &  Follow for more!!