Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.

Our rational brain has a problem focus when it needs a solution focus. If you are a manager, ask yourself, What is the ratio of the time you spend solving problems versus scaling successes? We need to switch from archaeological problem solving to bright-spot evangelizing.

The capabilities of business units reside in their processes and their values, and by their very nature, processes and values are inflexible and meant not to change.

Overcoming complacency is crucial at the start of any change process, and it often requires a little bit of surprise, something that grabs attention at more than an intellectual level. You need to surprise people with something that disturbs their view that everything is perfect.

It is far more productive to study human behavior – why people do the things they do – and to seek benefit from the learning than it is to try to fight it.

Self-image at work is a critical and often overlooked factor in the process of change. People change jobs and careers, but rarely do they think about changing their self-image. Perhaps that’s because self-image operates just below awareness, but still colors our perceptions, emotions and actions. Leaders who are not conscious of this fact tend to cling to their old self-image that keeps them from changing. There are plenty of examples -- like the CFO who becomes a CEO and still acts like a numbers guy, not as a leader with a broad vision of the company.

And the antidote to fear? Pull people out of their panic and self-protective impulses by first acknowledging the difficulties, then raising their eyes and hearts to a possibility of success.

At that point you can take advantage of their newly available and hopeful energy to make that possibility a reality.

Sitting monarchs don’t usually lead revolutions. Yet most management systems give a disproportionate share of influence over strategy and policy to a small number of senior executives. Ironically, these are the people most vested in the status quo and most likely to defend it. That’s why incumbents often surrender the future to upstarts. The only solution is to develop management systems that redistribute power to those who have most of their emotional equity invested in the future and have the least to lose from change.

Change is a door that can only be opened from the inside.

In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.

I started thinking about how to manage transformations in 1981. I read every book on transformation and distilled their essence by identifying common themes and eliminating outliers. On the basis of this intellectual exercise and personal experience, I created a four-step transformation loop. I use acronyms all the time, so I call this ESEE—because “easy” is the one thing change isn’t.

The first E stands for envisioning. Before you start any transformation, you have to create a vision of the future. You have to say, “This is where the world is going, and this is where I want to take my company.” The vision has to make sense to you; in other words, you must be convinced that your organization fits into the future that you envisage. Then—and I had to do this time and again—you have to create a structure. You have to decide what your company will look like; you have to know how to place your troops—where the generals will be, where the lieutenants will be, what the formations will look like.

The third step is enabling. You have to populate the structure with the right people and give them the financial resources they need. This process is akin to laying the supply lines before a battle. Once you’ve done that, you must get out of the way as the army starts moving. However, as chief executive, you still have one task to perform: You have to energize the corporation, which is the last E. You drop in on dealers to interact with customers and visit plants to meet employees—that galvanizes the corporation. Just the presence of senior executives on the company’s front lines is enough to energize people.

If there’s anything we’re wired to do, it’s learn. That means even folks arguably difficult by nature can become less so—at least most of them. It also means we shouldn’t assume, as we almost always do, that someone’s incapable of change just because our efforts to make them change fail. The biggest reason people don’t realize their full potential for change is that we focus so much on their innate traits we fail to see how our behavior is contributing to patterns of interaction that lock those traits in place.

Much sociological research suggests that the desire to avoid embarrassment, to maintain an acceptable public image, might be an even more powerful motive for human behavior than financial incentives. Organizations seeking to galvanize people to action—getting them to embrace new ideas or stimulating the personal initiative that often fuels innovation—should take this research...to heart.

Leaders aren't good merely at decision making. In a multi-polar world, "CEO" also stands for "chief education officer." A stumbling point for many organizations on a major change journey is that the top level of management has often moved on emotionally toward the new destination before many others have even started on the journey.

An effective CEO needs to step back and bring people along, to educate them, even if doing so is a distraction, or even boring. The new world is not one where an executive can simply say, "Do this." There is a critical educational component that must be exercised first. Leaders must be both learners and teachers.

Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everybody gets busy on the proof.

All real change involves major uncertainty, and we cannot deny the questioning time to others simply because we have already answered the questions for ourselves.

Whenever change is on the agenda, the power of relationships trumps the power of position.

People need something familiar to relate to in order to gain a sense of comfort with the new, the strange. Creative ideas take the facts, feelings and everyday fictions we all share and find new ways to connect them. By making the new and strange seem familiar, you not only establish an opening for your audience to interpret your idea, you create a backdrop against which the edge of your idea will shine.

In describing something new, something beyond most people’s vision, you need to create a mental map for them to follow you and your idea to its successful conclusion. The art of making a mental map is to hook your audience with what they know and then explain what they don’t know. Start with a construct that everyone is familiar with and add to it.

So how do you create a construct for something that people have never come across before? Make up a new word. It cuts through the clutter and gives everyone a new word that they can agree on. If we called [something familiar] we would probably find that a lot of people have their own notions of what [that word] means.

Change must be distinguished from “new learning” in that it implies some unlearning that is intrinsically difficult and often painful. Motivation to change does not arise until the change target feels secure enough to accept the disconfirming data. The change target feels “psychologically safe” if he or she can accept a new attitude or value without complete loss of self.

Once the individual feels safe, he or she can accept new information either through identification with others or by scanning the environment for new solutions. The more ambiguous the situation, the more the individual will rely on the judgments of others. New concepts and standards will not survive unless they are socially and personally reinforced.

You do not really understand an organization until you try to change it.

Whenever a new idea might affect resources, power, control or turf, politics will be part of the problem at the implementation stage. You need to prepare an idea-selling campaign, not just a presentation.

Change rarely unfolds in a straight line. The most important developments typically follow the S-curve shape of a power law: Change starts slowly and incrementally, putters along quietly, and then suddenly explodes, eventually tapering off and even dropping back down.

Without a supporting infrastructure to guide, monitor, and measure skills, behavior, leadership, and collaboration, cultural change is nearly certain to fail, because it is not tethered to business goals.

Former Intel chief Andy Grove has said that his firm's strategy process evolved in alternating cycles of chaos and singleminded focus - sometimes adapting, sometimes closing. Companies that do nothing but change - constantly reorganizing, always envisioning some new strategy or other, bringing in yet another team of change consultants - never reach closure, and so are no better off than companies that never change. Even the most evolving designs have to be fixed for a time.

The key, we believe, is to get the basics right so that the specifics can easily be changed. As Eric Raymond observed about software design, "You often don't really understand the problem until after the first time you implement a solution. If you want to get it right, be ready to start over at least once."