All experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

-- Declaration of Independence

The impulse to defend the predictability of life is a fundamental and universal principle of human psychology. Conservatism, in this sense, is [part] of our ability to survive...for without continuity we cannot interpret what events mean to us, nor explore new kinds of experience with confidence....Resistance to change is, then, as fundamental an aspect of learning as revision, and adaptability comes as much from our ability to protect the assumptions of experience, as from our willingness to reconsider them.

-- Peter Marris, Loss and Change

At any time, about half of the persons needed to pursue a solution are getting married or divorced; tending a sick or well relative; going bankrupt or coming into money; just starting, getting ready to leave, or near retirement; taking care of babies or putting children through college; making up or breaking up; getting sick, getting well; getting chronic or dying.

-- Tom Bird, in Ann Lieberman's Rethinking School Improvement

The fallacy of rationalism is the assumption that the social world can be altered by seemingly logical argument. The problem, as George Bernard Shaw observed, is that “reformers have the idea that change can be achieved by brute sanity.”

-- Michael Fullan, The New Meaning of Educational Change

Advocates of change concentrate so heavily on the benefits [of] their recommendations that they...lose sight of the personal effort and agony of people who have to accommodate to the new patterns: The advantages lost and the penalties inflicted by opponents, the humiliation of becoming a raw novice at a new trade after having been a master craftsman at an old one, and the deep crisis caused by the need to suppress ancient prejudices, to put aside the comfort of the familiar, to relinquish the security of what one knows well.

After an organization has been changed even a little, it begins to freeze into its new pattern almost at once; it does not remain loosely structured and flexible. All the tendencies that inhibited change in its prior configuration promptly make themselves felt in the new one.

-- Herbert Kaufman, The Limits of Organizational Change

I have found over and over...that the acceptance of a new point of view by the client has much less to do with the validity of the point of view than with his readiness to consider any alternatives whatsoever....It is the client or the person needing to change who is in control. Only when [he] decides to let something go, to unlearn something and seek something new, can the next stage of the change process begin.

-- Edgar Schein, Process Consultation
(Vol. II)

Any major organizational change generates four kinds of issues. First, it will have an effect on individuals' needs to feel effective, valued, and in control. Second, it will require new kinds of structural alignment with the organization. Third, the change will cause conflict among those who will benefit and those who will not benefit from it. And, finally, the change will result in loss of meaning for some members...particularly for those who are the targets rather than the initiators of the change.

-- Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal, Reframing Organizations

A new corporate language has been invented to support people's need to believe that their work is actually an endless quest for originality. “Outside the box,” for instance. These days you cannot spend two hours inside any big American company without some poor sucker telling you how he believes in “thinking outside the box.” “Outside the box” is to our age what “plastics” was to the 1960s. The one thing that is certain is that anyone who uses the phrase “outside the box” is as deeply inside the box as a person can be.

-- Michael Lewis, “The Artist in The Grey Flannel Pajamas.” New York Times Magazine, March 5, 2000.

The greatest inhibitor to enlisting others in a common vision is lack of personal conviction. There is absolutely no way that you can, over the long term, convince others to share a dream if you are not convinced of it yourself. A leader must ask before attempting to enlist others: “What do I want?” The true force that attracts others is the force of the heart.

Trust is almost always needed when leaders are accomplishing extraordinary things in organizations. The foundation of a trusting relationship is believing that the other person has integrity. This is demonstrated by meeting commitments and keeping promises.

To get a feel for the true essence of leadership, assume that everyone who works for you is a volunteer. Assume that they are there because they want to be, not because they have to be. What would need to exist for them to want to enlist in such an organization? What would do you need to do under those conditions if you wanted people to perform at high levels? What would you need to do if you wanted them to remain loyal to your organization?

-- James Kouzes & Barry Posner, The Leadership Challenge

Leadership in a world of dilemmas is not, fundamentally, a matter of style, charisma, or professional management technique. It is a difficult daily quest for integrity. In the final analysis, the power of leadership rests not so much on the personality of the individual as on the power of the ideas, purposes, and values he or she represents. Leaders are agents and catalysts through which others understand and identify with these ideas, purposes, and values, and are uplifted and motivated by them.

-- Joseph Badaracco and Richard Ellsworth, Leadership and the Quest for Integrity