Does Change Need to Be Difficult and Take a Long Time?

Management books can be interesting when you remember that if what they say is true, it can apply beyond business management.

Yet there is a basic Story underlying most successful change efforts. Change happens when:

1. People are dissatisfied with the status quo.
2. The direction they need to go is clear (at least much of the time) and they stay focused on that direction.
3. There is confidence conveyed to others--more accurately overconfidence--that it will succeed (so long at it is punctuated by reflective self-doubt and updating as new information rolls in)
4. They accept that change is a messy process marked by episodes of confusion and anxiety that people must endure.

--Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton, Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-truths & Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-based Management, pp. 177-178