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the-myth-of-fear-of-change.html
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<h2>The myth of fear of change</h2>
<h3>or, what to tell yourself when you don't want to listen</h3>
<label>02 May, 2023</label>
<p>What happens when you suggest changing how work is done, let's say, adopting waterscrum, the hot new process that adopts the best of waterfall with the best of scrum, and your employees start pushing back?</p>
<p>You could listen to your employees. After all, they are the people doing the work. They understand how your company actually works. Many of them have years of experience. Many have tried waterfall and scrum. Many may be fine with the suggestion, but are objectiving to specific implementation details. You could listen to this and consider it.</p>
<p>Or you can dismiss the feedback as people having "fear of change". And go forward with your decision.</p>
<p>I haven't found a group of people ever being afraid of change when the innovation is good. I can't recall someone fighting back Skype when they pitched unlimitted calls for three dollars a month. Or when Netflix offered DVD rentals with no late fees. How about people rejecting GUI computing with the Mac and Windows? Or IT engineers rejecting AWS EC2, allowing you to run a server in about two to five minutes?</p>
<p>No, as a population, people didn't reject these innovations. They were embraced. Because all of these improved our lives. If an innovation is good, people with adopt and embrace it.</p>
<p>You may think about some people sticking to some older technology as examples of "fear of change." Your aunt still uses her landline phone. But not so much because she rejects her cell phone, but because she is hard of hearing and the line quality sounds better for her. And all of her friends reach her at that phone number. And she plays candycrush on her iPhone and shares minion memes in Facebook. She sticks to some older technology for specific tasks.</p>
<p>The same can be said about consolve vs gui computing. A lot of people use a terminal, a technology created in the 1970s. And this is not rejecting windowed computing. There are some tasks that work better in the terminal, so you reach for the terminal to do them. The vast majority of people access their terminal via a GUI machine.</p>
<p>So what are people resistant to, then? They are resistant to getting hurt. And to a lesser extent, they are resistant to wasting time on bad ideas, many already proven as failures. </p>
<p>Many people were resistant to highway projects running through cities in the 1950s and 1960s. Did they hate progress? Did they fear change? No, they wanted to keep their homes and neighboorhoods. They didn't want to get hurt.</p>
<p>How about giving up banking and financial regulations in the 1980s and 1990s? Were the people opposed to rolling back the laws that gave financial stability to the US for 50 years fearful of innovation? No, they were afraid that doing so would bring back the boom and bust cycles that hurt generations of US citizens before these laws were put in place. They didn't want to get hurt. Judging by the 10 to 15 years cycles of "once in a lifetime" recessions that we have experienced and expect since they wrote those laws off the books, the people against these changes were right.</p>
<p>But, you may say, how about the famous Kodak case, where they invented the electronic camera, but the leadership was resistant to change? This is a real example of how fear to change tanked Kodak? Here we have two things going on. Their reluctancy did come from the fear of getting hurt. Most of the profits from Kodak came from selling film. The business leadership was correct in identifying that pushing for electronic cameras was going to kill their film division. With Kodak, it wasn't the fear of change that tanked them. It was a bad business decision, driven in part because there wasn't a good solution to their problem. Embracing electronic cameras may have kept them going a little longer, but I haven't bought a camera in years.</p>
<p>Our intelligence depends on other people being allowed to tell us that we are wrong. If the people we work with are strongly opposed to some initiative that we have, it is best to listen carefully. They may be saving us from a terrible decision.</p>
<p>Assuming good faith, what if you think that your idea is still good, but the opposition comes from it being unconventional? Then prove it at a small scale, to reduce the risk. Get a team to adopt the new process. Prove interest in your new product by collecting emails of people who want to use it. Build some prototypes and have people try your product out. In the US, people will quickly adopt tools or practices if they are successful with other US teams or companies.</p>
<p>And what if others don't adopt them? Then you have a competitive advantage. Use it.</p>
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