Negotiating With the Old Guard
- Rashmi Kulkarni
- May 4
- 4 min read
The old guard isn’t blocking change. They’re protecting something.
In the previous article, Rahul spoke about BATNA ... your leverage when authority alone doesn’t work. Now I want to talk about what happens right after that.
Because once you stop begging, and you stop shouting, you still have to do the hardest part:
You have to bring the old guard along without breaking the room.
And the quickest way to get this wrong is to treat it like a logic problem.
It’s not.
It’s closer to a family wedding.
The wedding seating problem
In an Indian wedding, seating is never “just seating”.
You don’t move people around by saying, “This arrangement is more efficient.”
You move people around by protecting dignity.
Because seats represent status. History. Relationships. Who matters. Who doesn’t.
If you touch it carelessly, you start a fight that has nothing to do with chairs.
That is exactly how the old guard works in a legacy MSME.
They are not just “employees who resist change.”
They are carriers of history.
So when you come in with modernization, they may push back ... but the pushback is rarely about the process itself. It’s about what the process implies.
Which seat are you stepping into?
Inherited seat: The old guard may feel: “We built this. Now the child will erase it.”
Hired seat: They may feel: “Outsider has come to teach us. Today he changes the system, tomorrow he changes us.”
Promoted seat: They may feel: “Yesterday you were equal. Today you’re acting like boss.”
Different seats. Same underlying emotion: threat to identity.
Positions are loud. Interests are real.
Negotiation experts Fisher and Ury make a simple point: people state positions, but they act based on interests.
Position is what they say:
“This will not work.”
“We have always done it this way.”
“Why do you need this data?”
“This software is useless.”
Interest is what they care about:
“Don’t make me look incompetent.”
“Don’t take away my control.”
“Don’t expose my team.”
“Don’t reduce my status.”
“Don’t make me irrelevant.”
If you fight positions, you get stuck in endless debates. If you address interests, you can design a trade.
That’s the shift: trade, not fight.
Why the old guard resists even good change
Most old-guard resistance is not “anti-modern”. It is self-protection.
Common interests I see behind resistance:
Pride: “We built this with our hands. Don’t treat us like fools.”
Safety: “If data becomes visible, blame will land on me.”
Status: “If rules become formal, my influence reduces.”
Control: “If decisions become system-driven, I lose discretion.”
Identity: “If new ways win, my old ways look wrong.”
When you label them “resistant,” you insult these interests.
And once insulted, they stop listening.
The leader’s job: create face-saving pathways
If you want adoption, you need to give people a way to say yes without losing face.
Face-saving doesn’t mean giving up. It means designing a bridge.
Examples:
“We are not replacing your experience. We are capturing it.”
“We are not questioning your work. We are reducing follow-ups.”
“We are not making you redundant. We are making your decisions easier.”
“We are not changing everything. We are piloting one interface.”
This is not flattery. This is respect.
Because change without respect becomes war. And war is expensive in an MSME.
Trades that actually work
A “trade” means you protect one interest while getting the behavior you need.
Some practical trades:
Protect status: “You will sponsor the new ritual. I will not run it without you.”
Protect identity: “We’ll name the new checklist after your method.”
Protect safety: “Pilot data will not be used for appraisal for 60 days.”
Protect control: “You keep final say on exceptions, but exceptions must be logged.”
Protect pride: “You train the team on the ‘why’ behind the old method, and we add a simple ‘how’ layer.”
Notice: you’re not “bribing”. You’re aligning incentives.
Also, these trades work best when they are made early ... before the relationship becomes bitter.
Some negotiation thinkers call this “setup moves” (Lax and Sebenius write about this):
don’t enter a fight and then negotiate. Set the table so negotiation becomes the natural path.
Field Test: Two resistors, three interests, one trade each
Pick two key resistors. Not ten. Two.
For each person, write:
Their position (what they say)
Three interests (what they’re protecting)Use this list as prompts: pride, safety, status, control, identity, relationships
One trade that protects dignity and still moves the system forward
Then do one more step: check your own tone.
If your trade sounds like “I am allowing you”, it will fail.
If it sounds like “I respect what you carry”, it has a chance.
The close
When you’re stepping into leadership, it’s tempting to treat resistance like a technical issue: “If I explain better, they will comply.”
That rarely works in legacy MSMEs.
The old guard is not blocking change because they hate progress.They’re blocking change because something feels at risk.
So don’t fight their positions. Listen for their interests.
And then design a trade that lets them keep dignity while the system moves.
Next article, Rahul will take us to the next layer: coalition math ... why the majority doesn’t matter, and how small blocking groups quietly control outcomes in multiparty settings.
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