It will never work

When trying to change behaviors, habits, routines or goals in a company on of the first difficulties faced is the opposition from co-workers, employees and team members.

“It won’t work”.

“Completely wrong”.

“They don’t understand the problem, this is crazy”.

Ï’m not going to waste my time on this, it’s stupid”.

They might be right.  It might be stupid, crazy, it won’t work…but it is never a waste of time.

Change, applying new and disruptive methods to operations and problem solving, is always a gamble, and always generates resistance, and many times will not solve the problem.

People say they want change, but only change that has no cost or discomfort associated with it.

Changes will always..always.. always…stimulate new ideas, and get people talking, and more importantly thinking about the problem, the solutions or the process.

This new dialogue, about what is the real problem, about what is a better solution, is what we are after.

Creating and implementing new ideas, creating chaos in some cases, forces people to move out of a “comfort” zone.

Don’t be afraid to hear “it won’t work”, that may be exactly what the team needs to respond.

Your reply should be “OK, what is a better solution?”  Do not focus on defending the idea, get the conversation going how best to solve the problem, or define the problem.