People can and do change their behaviors—they simply need to be “ripe” to do so. That is, the right conditions and psychological factors need to be in place for them to be open and willing to change.
If people don’t suddenly agree with you overnight and grasp your way due to your sheer brilliance, that’s your problem not theirs. Communicate harder. And be patient.
The human rate of change is measured in years. I’m ten years into this stuff and I still grasp new concepts regularly. The velocity of humans imagining Nirvana is higher than the velocity of building that Nirvana. Your concept gets there right away but the real world not so much. Patience! Humans are distributed on the normal “bell” distribution curve for their time to adopt new ideas.
(The model comes from Diffusion of Innovation (DOI) Theory, developed by E.M. Rogers in 1962.)
Embrace the diversity of your people. I like conservatives: they provide an essential brake on irrational exuberance.
The nice thing about being a “horse”, a legacy organisation, is that you have areas that won’t change much for years, where you can “park” the more careful people to give them time to absorb new ideas. If you’re going to change faster than your people, then you are going to accrue cultural debt, just like the technical debt you are also generating when you go too fast. You’ll pay.
From our book Open Management
There is much more we can say about the bell curve:
(I’m about here:)
See also The chasm