Recognize Widespread Resistance to Change

Your approach to effecting change must anticipate resistance to change, especially if you are suggesting a major change. The Italian politician and writer Nicolo Machiavelli (Machiavelli 1980) offered this sage advice during the Renaissance  

There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new system. 

For the initiators have the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in those who would gain by the new one. 

in particular, his mention of the initial enmity of many who oppose change contrasted with the only lukewarm defenders of change. Effecting change is difficult. Nevertheless, the leader in us wants change— we are dissatisfied with the present situation and can see a better one. 

Statements such as the following, which are adapted from Barker (1992) and Carroll (2004) who discuss change, reflect the tendency to react emotionally, in knee-jerk fashion, to a proposed change or even the suggestion to consider change. These are ways to douse change talk with water rather than fuel it with gasoline  

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