Change management and organizational resistance are constant topics for anyone trying to lead change. I hear all the time how resistant people are to change, but I disagree. People aren’t resistant to change, they are resistant to consequences. Their habits are resistant to change. We treat these as the same problem but they aren’t. Most management teams don't have the tools in place to help people change, which is a large part of why it's so hard to do. A habit is a brai

Paint the fence. Sand the floor. Wax on, wax off. If you've seen The Karate Kid, you remember Daniel's frustration. He shows up wanting to learn karate, and instead Mr. Miyagi has him doing chores for days. Daniel thinks he's being used for cheap labor. Then Mr. Miyagi throws a punch at him, and Daniel blocks it perfectly with the motion he learned by sanding the floor. That scene works because it's not just a movie trick. It's a correct description of how the brain actually

For years, one machine dominated my downtime report. Not because it was old, or exotic, or particularly complicated... it dispensed a single component into the product. The machine's job was to cut this component from a web and drop it into the product. That's all it did. But it produced two failure modes which appeared on the daily report almost every day: it would cut the component in the wrong spot, or the line would have been down and this machine's name would be listed