Why the New Way Is Not Catching On

by Garrison Wynn, CSP

Change is rarely the real problem. It's resistance to change that prevents us from the mass adoption of a good idea or a better way of doing things. To really ignite change, you have to ask yourself (or your organization) a big scary question: What is the benefit of staying stuck?

The easy answer, of course, is that there's no benefit to staying stuck. And yet, stuck is where people tend to stay. Research from organizations like Gallup and Pew and from minds like Freud indicates that human beings do very little without a payoff. Finding out what that payoff is and reshaping it into a flexible agenda that can break left and right to avoid failure is what makes most organizations and people successful regardless of circumstances. So if you feel like the direction you're heading in is hard to alter, it's most likely the wrong direction!

 Power Tips for Change

1. Some say it can be demotivating to have a fallback plan, but any good, well-thought-out plan has an option for when things don't go perfectly. So shoot for the moon, but have a plan that could also work well in Cleveland!
2. It's very difficult to get buy-in on any plan or new process that doesn't honor the old plan. Similarly, the new way must somehow show the value of existing knowledge held by the people you need to implement the change.

 "Change begins when you decide that staying stuck in a guaranteed mode of mediocrity is much worse than the possibility of failure." - Garrison Wynn

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