I have. You think that the change is going along smoothly, and then.... wham! Oops - we missed that. :( 
Now what do we do? Do we rescind the decision and revert back to the old way? Do we admit our failing - apologize and ask our stakeholders to gut it out and move on? Ugh.. our reputation is at stake here! 

Digging in your heels is probably not a good idea.. might as well kill the project. What you missed will go down as the only thing remembered about the change. Reverting back to the old way - not a good idea either. There had to be some business goal that is not being achieved if you do that.... right? 

Probably the only choice you have is: 1. Be transparent about the miss. 2. Involve the stakeholders in calibrating the solution. 3. Let them know that they can and will make a difference in making sure we do this the right way. 4. Add some of them to the team to help build confidence that we won't miss something else. Tough pill to swallow? Yep.

 John Kotter, a well known change management guru, tells us that when it comes to trying to convince those most resistant to change - well, to change.... forget about it! If someone is that dead-set against the change, they will do everything in their power (consciously or subconsciously) to sabotage the change. Yikes! Kotter recommends getting them out of the way, divert them, give them an assignment that will keep them from tampering with your project. 

Another school of thought goes something like this... If you can convert your biggest resistor you will have your biggest supporter. True enough. But consider the amount of energy you have to spend on doing the conversion. Dr. Julie Smith (another guru in change management) says that during  organizational change - reactions generally fall out like this: About 20% will resist the change; 60% will be receptive to it: 15% will react instinctively to the change; and, 5% will be resilient. Of course these percentages will shift depending on the severity of the change. But Julie kind of agrees with Kotter in some respects (I'm in the same camp - I "kinda agree"). As change managers, we should spend most of our effort working with those who are receptive to the change as they are the most vulnerable and can slip into the chasm of resistance. However, we can also help those who are resistant through coaching them to re-frame their thoughts and beliefs about the change. No matter what, there always choices: A) Accept the Change, B) Modify the change so it works for you, C) Choose to create a  "new change" that fits you, or D) Choose to be miserable and a victim. How choose you? 

The authors of Switch state that we often mistake people's desire to change as laziness. They site a study where researchers ask a number of students to come into a lab where they will test their taste preferences. One group is asked to  eat the freshly baked chocolate chip cookies while the other group is asked to only sample a bowl of radishes. The researchers leave the room to induce temptation (for the unfortunate radish eating  group) to see if they would "cheat" and steal a cookie. Well, they didn't. They worked hard at staying true to the assignment. The researchers announced that this study was over and gave the groups another assignment. Both groups were asked to trace a geometrical puzzle and not lift their pencil or backtrack... this exercise was designed as virtually impossible. The results? On average, the cookie eating group spent about 18 minutes on the task before giving up. The radish eaters on the other hand - gave up after 8 minutes! This is attributed to the fact that the radish eaters spent so much of their energy holding back on the previous task (avoiding the cookies) that their self control had just depleted! 

So what does this have to do with change? During a major change in our lives, we are asked to substitute new behaviors for old familiar ones. As we "work" on the new (sometimes frustrating) task - we burn a lot of energy. In today's world, especially at work - we are asked to do many new things each day. No wonder we sometimes go home crabby! I don't think it is so much that people are lazy and don't want to change. I think that we are saturated with changes that do in fact exhaust us!