Blocker (noun) - Someone who purposefully opposes any change (improvement) to a process for personal reasons
“Blockers” can occupy any position in a company. They can be any age, gender, education level or pay rate. We tend to think of blockers as older, more experienced workers who have been with the company for a long time, and they don’t want to consider any other way to do things.
While that may be true in some cases, don’t be surprised to find blockers who are young, well-educated and fairly new to the company. One blocker I encountered was a human resources leader who was in her late 20s. We thought she would be the first to volunteer to lead an improvement team. Instead, she put up barriers at every step and finally decided to quit the company. In her exit interview, she said that she had hoped to retire with the company without having to deal with any changes or disruptions.
Sometimes blockers are obvious in their attempts to keep change from happening. Most of the time, however, they stay fairly well hidden and undermine the improvement activities until the effort fails, the team wanting to make the change gives up or the blocker gets out of the way. In my experience, it takes a lot of effort to get a blocker to buy into the improvement initiatives. They may decide instead to just try and “wait it out” and see how long they can go before being forced to comply or leave. If a blocker does eventually buy into the change, there is the possibility that they will become a positive advocate for the improvement. This requires training, mentoring and involvement in the improvement process so the blocker can get comfortable with and own the changes.
Blockers to improvement efforts have many reasons why they do not want things to change. For example, when launching a new lean/Six Sigma initiative, the blockers may simply not understand the tools and principles and are unwilling to admit that they don’t know (especially company leaders and certified Six Sigma belts who may not have worked on a project for several years). This is why I recommend to my clients that the entire company go through refresher training in order to make sure everyone is on the same page.
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By John Dyer, from: http://www.industryweek.com/change-management/what-motivates-blockers-resist-change
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