Change is tough

The papers and blogs and e-newsletters are always full of stories about what we might call resistance to change, such as bike lanes (today's NYT has a story about problems there, "Expansion of Bike Lanes in City Brings Backlash"), smart growth, agency directors, electric cars and charging systems, bike sharing (a socialist plot said a candidate for Governor in Colorado, "Bike agenda spins cities toward U.N. control, Maes warns" from the Denver Post), global warming, greenhouse gases, Peak Oil, etc.

So I find this wisdom, surprisingly from the Washington Post Sunday Business section feature on leadership, "GM: Lessons in revival?," pretty apt. From the entry by George Reed:

In his 15th Century treatise on leadership and political power, Niccolo Machiavelli sagely pointed out that:

It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, or more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the laws in their favour; and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it.

Large, complex organizations become so in part because they are successful. The habits and mindsets that contribute to that success have a way of becoming ingrained in the people, processes and systems--such that even when there is clear evidence that a change is necessary, organizational inertia stands in the way. Sometimes it takes a clear threat to organizational survival to prompt a new way of doing business that is responsive to changes outside of the company. As we have seen with General Motors before the bankruptcy, sometimes even that is not enough. Prior success can be a powerful narcotic that dulls the motivation to engage in the hard work of change and innovation. ...