Beware the holdouts!

Peter du ToitI'm the founder of FutureWork IQ where I spend my time assisting businesses to improve their climate literacy so as to understand the projected impacts from the expanding climate crisis and how to adapt their workplaces in the face of these impacts.

Designing and deploying a digital workplace often brings with it a radical new way of working. When changing the way teams work, there will, almost without exception, be one or two individuals who become “holdouts,” they simply refuse to work the new way.

For example, they will continue to use email instead of a way more efficient enterprise social network. You have to be aware that holdouts can derail your adoption initiatives, especially if the holdout is a senior executive.

Hopefully the business has a culture that other senior executives can say to the individual/s “You’re holding us back. This is the way we are working now.”

Raise you hand ✋🏻if you have ever experienced a “holdout.

This picture is a famous holdout of duck farmer Luo Baogen, the sole holdout from a neighborhood that was demolished to make way for the new highway. He eventually gave in, but not before the freeway was built around his house! Story here.