A famous Renaissance work was Machiavelli’s The Prince. Its thesis was “there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.”
John P. Kotter agreed with this thesis in HBR’s What Leaders Really Do, when he said, “Managers promote stability while leaders press for change.”
In government, two national leaders took this further. First, England’s Winston Churchill said, “To improve is to change, to be perfect is to change often.” The USA’s JFK agreed when he said, “Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.”
Even with this encouragement to change, we often struggle. When their doctors tell cardiac patients they will die if they don’t change their lifestyle, eat less and exercise more…only 1 in 7 makes the required changes. On a more humorous note regarding our difficulty with change, I recently heard these:
- “When the horse you are riding dies, dismount.”
- “Yet, this is the way we have always ridden this horse.”
- “No horse is too dead to beat”
Change is inevitable…except from a vending machine!
Are you a change leader? Or, are you resistant to change?
