More than 9 out of 10 patients do not change their lifestyles in response to their doctor’s recommendations.
More than 70 percent of corporate change efforts fail.
Humans hate change.
It’s a simple fact of life. There isn’t any easy way around it. In general, humans hate change.
That rule extends beyond individuals into groups of humans: families, tribes, organizations, companies, communities and nations. Humans hate change.
As individuals and groups, we tend to get locked into a way of doing things, a set of perceptions and a set of expectations. Anything that forces us to change anything about what we consider normal is usually resisted.
Even in the face of overwhelming evidence for the need for change, we will resist change. For example, the majority of people who suffer heart attacks do not make long term changes in their lifestyles to eliminate or limit factors that contribute to heart disease. In other words, even when it’s a matter of life and death, humans hate change so much they won’t change even to save their own lives.
There are university degree programs in change management; multiple national and global professional associations of practicing change management consultants; countless thousands of trained, certified and degreed change management practitioners and a cornucopia of books, videos, workshops and tutorials on implementing change. In spite of all this learning and all these resources, there has been relatively little improvement in change rates in humans or groups of humans.
Why is this so?
