Sometimes in change projects we have most of the stakeholders aligned and agreed, we have plans in place, and we think it is a no brainer. And yet, there is one vocal person with various forms of individual, positional, and relational power who says ‘no’ so the project stalls.

Sometimes that person is actually the voice of all the ‘niggles’ and ‘uncertainties’ of the all the stakeholders; all the resistance in everyone. So we make a villain out of the individual, but the villain is in us.

The interesting thing is that to ‘address’ the resistance in the other and in our ourselves, we throw logic, rationale, cold hard facts at it. But this does little. The resistance is rarely about facts and logic; it’s usually about fear and the stories we tell ourselves.

We need to tell better stories and sometimes, we simply need to go with a small group of the willing.