Skip to content


15 Excuses For Not Changing And 5 Reasons To Change The Way We Make Change

96005727Going Along With How It’s Been Done Is Not The Best Way To Go Through Business

I have a client that is so entrenched in its way of doing things that a significant part of my job has been to manage change. Change is hard for everyone and how and when to change has been debated and discussed in companies since the first company was formed.  What is never debated are some of the excuses used for not changing. People are resistant to change and despite the need to move forward people generally prefer to live with what they have. Fast Company put out a list of Reasons Why We Cannot Change and these are my favorite 15:

  1. We’ve never done it before
  2. We’ve been doing it this way for 25 years
  3. It won’t work in our company
  4. Why change — it’s working OK
  5. It needs further investigation
  6. It’s too much trouble to change
  7. Our company is different
  8. We don’t have the money
  9. We don’t have the personnel
  10. You can’t teach old dog new tricks
  11. It’s too radical a change
  12. I don’t like it
  13. You’re right, but….
  14. We’re not ready for it
  15. We’re doing all right as it is

“Men Plan, God Laughs”

This list was originally complied in 1959!!! by E.F. Borish a product manager for a Milwaukee company.  Amazingly these excuses are as true today as they were over 50 year ago. So we plan to make change and address the list of excuses to help achieve a positive result. Regardless, in addressing these excuses it is important to accept that change is difficult and also understand that great strategic plans may still not yield desired results. Management must acknowledge during any change process that “culture eats strategy for breakfast” (a quote attributed to management guru Peter Drucker).

5 Changes To The Way We Change

To help address the culture and achieve success, Harvard Business Review’s Bill Taylor suggests changing the way to approach change in his article The More Things Change, the More Our Objections to Change Stay the Same.

Mr. Taylor continues asks –  “so what have we learned in the twenty years since Fast Company was created, or the 54 years since E.F. Borisch compiled his list?”  He suggests 5 possible principles to consider to change the way we make change:

  1. OriginalityFor leaders to see their organization and its problems as if they’ve never seen them before, and, with new eyes, they need to develop a distinctive point of view on how to solve them
  2. Break from the past without disavowing it – The most effective leaders…don’t turn their back on the past. They reinterpret what’s come before to develop a line of sight into what comes next.
  3. Encourage a sense of dissatisfaction with the status quo – persuade colleagues that business as usual is the ultimate risk, not a safe harbor from the storms of disruption
  4. Requires a sense of “humbition” (humility and ambition) among leaders – enough ambition to address big problems, enough humility to know you don’t have the answers. When it comes to change, nobody alone is as smart as everybody together.
  5. Be consistent in the approach – If, as a leader, you want to make deep-seated change, then your priorities and practices have to stay consistent in good times and bad times.

Change does not have to be a bad thing but managing the change process must be addressed. Strateigic plans must have an approach to dealing with change to achieve a measured success.

How Do You Address Cultural Issues During the Change Processs?

Posted in Strategic Planning.

Tagged with , , , , .


One Response

Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.

  1. Ella Clark says

    A very nice article.. Definitely worth a read. Thanks



Some HTML is OK

or, reply to this post via trackback.

*