“It’ll never fly, Wilbur!”

That’s standard response to questions about harebrained ideas that clearly won’t work.

Why? To put my pessimism in context, that’s why. Punditry doesn’t have much of a track record. Since humankind’s pundits resisted not only the airplane but also the automobile, the steel plow, and every other useful innovation in history, it’s safe to speculate that when Glock first fished out a chunk of meat that had accidentally fallen into his fire and ate it anyway, his troglodyte neighbors warned him that “Ock narb blishk kank gack nork!” ( “You’re going to die! Fire poisons meat!”).

For the most part, people resist change. Our entire evolutionary history tells us change is bad. Although we got lucky last time the comet hit, clearing out the dinosaurs so we mammals could take over the planet, this time, unless Bruce Willis comes through, we’re the goners.

Which is why major changes need sponsors to succeed: People resist change.

There is no way to emphasize the need for a sponsor strongly enough. If you’re involved in a major change initiative right now, take a second to reconnoiter. Do you see a high-level corporate executive sponsoring it?

If not, recruit one immediately. If you can’t, run away. Hide under a rock until the dust settles. Politely decline. Get transferred to another department. Whatever you do, disassociate yourself from the impending disaster, because major change requires consistent, active leadership … in other words, a sponsor.

Not just anyone can be a sponsor. Here’s what it takes:

• Authority: Sponsors must be in a position to make decisions. What is a decision? It’s the commitment of time, money, and resources. (This is a useful definition in other contexts, too. Whenever someone delegates a decision to you, confirm your delegated authority by asking if you can commit time, money, and resources to the result. If not, you’ve only been asked to make a recommendation.)
• Personal benefit: Sponsors must benefit from the proposed change personally. Business schools talk about business benefit, return on investment analysis, and lots of other side-issues, but what drives change in real corporations is personal benefit, which is as it should be in a capitalist, market economy. What, you expect altruism? Sorry — capitalism is based the expectation that individuals maximize their “utility” — they do what’s best for themselves. So your sponsor must personally benefit from the proposed change or one of two things is true: Either your sponsor is two beers shy of a six-pack, or your “sponsor” is merely a figurehead who will cut and run at the first sign of trouble.
• Emotional commitment: Lots of things are good for you. Most, like tofu, are things you’d rather avoid. (Honk if you love tofu, but not near me, OK?) Change involves risk, so sponsorship requires emotional commitment to the result. If your sponsor doesn’t want the change passionately, your sponsor won’t put his or her neck on the chopping block when the time comes to take the risks and make the commitments major change needs from time to time.

  In return for all this, you have one responsibility to the sponsor of any change you’re involved in: Communicate. In particular, don’t withhold bad news. Sponsors take significant personal risks on behalf of the change they’re sponsoring; don’t let them get blindsided. If the schedule is going to slip, tell your sponsor. If you need more staff, tell your sponsor. If you’re out of your depth and need help, tell your sponsor. If you just keep saying, “We’re doing fine, chief!” until the ship sinks, all you’ve done is drag someone underwater with you who could have saved your neck.

One more thing: Sometimes, sponsors leave in the middle of the change. It happens. What should you do? Keep working on the change, but don’t take any risks. Keep your head down. Assign your sponsor’s successor to the sponsorship role by setting up regular status meetings. You need to find out if you have a new sponsor because if you don’t … go looking for that rock to hide under — you’re exposed.

I’ve just made the transition from renting to owning. Someday I’ll understand why the Constitution of the United States, which describes our entire system of government, has so many fewer pages than the papers I signed at the closing.

Obtaining a mortgage was bad enough — while mortgage companies understand YUPPIES (Young Urban Professionals) and DINKS (Dual Income, No Kids), they don’t understand how a SITHY such as myself (Single Income, Two Households) could manage to pay a monthly mortgage lower than the rent I’d been paying all along.

Compared to everything involved in moving from one place to another, the mortgage was the easy part. Getting the new place to my liking, transferring my utilities, sending out change of address information to everyone who might care, and especially unpacking (unable to cope, I paid a moving company to do as much as possible) … there’s nothing about this experience I enjoyed, except the result after it was over.

Employees who experience business change react the same way, except that often, the result of the change is no fun either. Their natural inclination is to resist it.

Heck, nearly everyone’s inclination is to resist change. Since in IS we’re in the change business, we need to be good at overcoming that resistance. This is an important subject, so this isn’t the last you’ll read about it in this space.

Everyone resists change. Those who do real work resist change, because “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and besides, I spent years mastering this job and now you’re making my skills irrelevant. Not only that, but the whole point of the change is increased productivity, and I’m not stupid — you’re going to downsize when you’re done.”

Managers resist change, because “We must have been doing something right all these years. Besides, right now I still understand the work because I was promoted from the ranks, but after you change it all my teams will know more about it than I will. Not only that, but part of every change is reorganization, and modern reorganizations ‘de-layer’ the company. De-layering leaves fewer management positions, so even if I do grab one of the remaining chairs when the music stops, I’ll have fewer opportunities for promotion than I have now.”

Executives resist change, too, because “I spent years getting to the exorbitant level of compensation I receive now, I’ve entirely forgotten how to do useful work, and the distance I can fall if the change makes me irrelevant is a heckuva lot longer than the distance I can climb if I survive it.”

How about the CEO? Surely this paragon of leadership will embrace the painful changes needed for the company to navigate the dangerous shoals of the future. “Sure, except that I only have five years until I retire, this change is going to be tremendously disruptive to our short-term profitability, and my compensation depends on how well our stock performs, so why should I go through this pain when it’s my successor who will experience the benefit? Besides, this may be the wrong change to make because the whole point about the future is that you can’t predict it.”

And then there’s you. Whatever position you hold in IS, what you really end up holding is the bag, because information technology isn’t just built into every modern business change — it’s the most visible part of it, and usually it’s the critical path. Succeed and employees blame you for the pain they experience. Fail to deliver the technology and your name is on the failure. Even when you deliver the technology, if employees resist the change your design must be the problem.

That’s OK, of course, because there’s nothing more fun than a software development death-march, so the joy of creation will make it all worthwhile.

And that’s the silver lining part. It gets worse, because you know every silver lining is accompanied by a nasty dark cloud. In this case the dark cloud is this: Companies that fail to change end up looking a lot like Amtrak in an age of airplanes, only without the subsidies — mostly irrelevant.

That means that when it comes to change you have only two choices: Hurt now, or hurt later.

Pick one.