“Individuals behave in a difficult manner because they have
learned that doing so keeps others off balance and incapable of effective
action. Worst of all, they appear immune to all the usual methods of
communication and persuasion designed to convince or help them change their
ways.”- Robert Bramson, Ph.D.
I will probably spend the rest of my life trying to figure out why some people are so vehemently opposed to change, progress or new ideas that they will exert more energy fighting them than embracing them. I am sorry to hear that so many of you are dealing with this. I don’t have a lot of advice to give you there, except this:
Far be it from me to suggest that every new idea and every bit of change is positive. Success, after all, is more often than not the result of countless failures – some calculated, others not. I completely understand how and why intelligent professionals would (and should) be suspicious of new ideas. Due dilligence does play a significant role in effectively adopting new ideas and making them work. No question.
But some people resist change no matter what. These are not people who take the time to analyze a new idea or concept, run scenarios, try to figure out contingencies, look for lateral opportunities, and get around potential pitfalls along the way. These are just difficult people who enjoy being roadblocks.
Perhaps it makes them feel important: If they can’t actually be agents of change, at least they can be agents of un-change.
Maybe it’s all one big ego trip. A passive-aggressive power play.
Maybe it’s just that making sure that things don’t change defaults to predictability in their professional ecosystem , and predictability equals security. The less you change, the less you rock the boat, the safer you are.
Which makes sense when you realize that people who tend to become human roadblocks have made a career out of doing essentially nothing. (Doing something is what their staff is for.) There can only be security in doing nothing when the alternative (doing something) can be sold to senior management as a high-risk, low reward proposition.
I just started to follow this blog, so I came across this elderly post and wanted to ask you something: what about dealing with people who have a limited concept of what products, services, marketing channels and techniques, selling practices and so forth could deliver to them or their customers?
What if you work in a consumer market that’s about a decade behind the ones you’ve been operating in, and you are trying to bring some insight to your peers operating there, but they have trouble understanding what it’s all about…
Even if you come to them and reveal cool and proven formulas, things that work and have worked, but they cannot understand them, they flat out reject them or they do not support empirical data that says: It will work here just as it works in Minichiwanya…
What would you suggest in energizing and making peers in less developed consumer markets embrace change and progress and, by the way, erradicate a sort of evil reductionist “not invented here” syndrome?
I spent most of the last decade in the same situation, so let me give you the best piece of advice a martini can buy:
Get. Out.
Run.
Seriously. Don’t waste another minute of your time trying to teach old dogs new tricks. If they don’t want to, you won’t convince them. No matter how smart and cool you are, that battle was lost long before you ever walked onto the battlefield.
No matter how cool your superpowers, you will lose this one.
Save yourself a year or two of grief and start looking for a company you can actually help.
