How to generate resistance to change

If you want to increase the likelihood and level of resistance to a change, here are a few strategies you can use:

Reduce allies and increase enemies by alienating everyone.  The easiest way to start is to alienate people who are already openly hostile to the change.  This is because you don't really need to do anything.  Converting them into allies requires significant effort that you can simply not expend.

The best leverage though comes from alienating people who are initially sympathetic to the change.  In this case, it may be better to understand their interests more explicitly in order to shape the direction of the change implementation in such a way that it attacks their interests.  On the other hand, you want to be careful that your information gathering approach is not accidentally perceived as involving them in the change which may generate commitment to it.

The safest approach may be to avoid direct involvement to prevent a sense of commitment and rely on the likelihood of accidental mis-alignment of interests.  When inevitable disagreements occur, ensure you frame them in terms of positions, not interests, to prevent effective negotiation.

Someone may detect what you are doing and/or push towards more understanding with other parties.  This is dangerous but also serves as an excellent opportunity to create alienation even between people who are initially quite supportive of the change.  Emphasise lack of dedication, wrong mindset, etc. to create personal animosity.  Subtlety here is typically more effective than open hostility but it depends on context.

Dilute focus with mission creep.  People will naturally find it difficult to maintain focus on the purpose of the change and you can use this to your advantage.  Various distractions and new ideas inevitably appear and it will actually appear inclusive and responsive when you encourage that they are all absorbed.  The competing concerns will slow the change to a crawl and/or create conflict due to competing interests.  Again, undermine conflict resolution by emphasising positions over interests. This will sap motivation and eventually kill the change altogether.

A key tip here is to discourage any explicit expression of purpose or boundaries.  This can be explained by reference to inclusion and open innovation which is effective because initially it will be true.

Focus on what you can't do before what you can do.  The change effort will have a sphere of authority and a larger sphere of influence.  If you focus first on actions in the sphere of authority, you will generate quick wins which will create confidence and momentum for the change.  Therefore, focus first on the sphere of influence and better yet, slightly beyond the edges.  It will be difficult to distinguish between actions that you don't have influence to do versus simply a failure in the change  These initial failures will set the tone for the overall change effort which makes it much easier to argue that the change won't work in it's entirety.  Note that you want to avoid making that argument yourself.  Repeated failure will tend to cause someone else to make the argument for you.

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Please comment if you have other effective strategies and good luck on undermining change!