I’m a bit of a sucker for panhandlers. I have lived my life trying to be helpful and, when I encounter someone who asks for a little help, I too frequently reach into my pockets. My family know this about me and tend to increase our pace around street people.

Some years ago I was walking with my son and daughter along Broadway in the Capital Hill district of Seattle. Capital Hill was a young hip part of town with lots of restaurants and coffee shops, but it also attracted healthy white suburban teenagers who “bummed money” to finance their Saturday entertainment before going home to the ‘rents place to sleep.

As we walked, “Spare iny change?” was mumbled from seemingly every street corner. My kids hustled me along.

We were following a nicely dressed long haired twentyish guy, who perhaps because he was young seemed to attract requests for money.

“Spare iny change?”

The long-hair barely turned, “No man, change comes from within.” He kept walking.

We cracked up. Even now remembering the stunned look on the panhandling teen’s face makes me smile. My son said, “I am definitely stealing that line.”

Leaders are often in the change game, not spare change, but real change with consequences.

We lead towards something or away from something, but often the leader must find a strength within that others will follow.. Sometimes the same people who manage us day to day are the same people who lead us in a new direction, but not always.

Consulting is always about change.

Companies may hire a consultant to change strategy or customer base, innovate new products, improve processes or install systems. Funny then that, when I joined the field, consultants didn’t define themselves as in the change business. They were in strategy, innovation, improvement, or systems, but not change. There was detailed PowerPoint slides explaining the reasons for the [new strategy, system, or *** ], a step-by-step how-to, and the benefits that the [***] would bring, without ever using the ‘C’ word. “Don’t say change; it scares people,” a senior consultant told me.

Some consultants included a slide entitled “Change Management.” This showed training, or new roles and responsibilities, or new metrics. At one point in my career I was given “change management project streams.” I was brought in late in the project and introduced as the “change guy.” This was often said with a sneer by consultants who felt that what I did was “squishy.” One project leader said, “your work has no content in it.”

These days more consultants recognize the fundamental truth that change is about altering behavior – people must do things differently or do different things. And that includes the leaders.

Good leaders quickly figure out that people don’t change without a reason.

The incompetent or insecure leader (or consultant) will say “people resist change because they fear change.” It isn’t true. Look the number of people who move to a different job, city, or country. Look at the people who get married, have children, start businesses, or  try anything that will turn their life upside down.

What do those changes have that the change you are leading doesn’t? Simple, choice. People choose to undertake those changes. Those are their changes; This one is your change.

Still people make jokes about “fear of change.” A colleague told me the story of his resistance to his wife’s entreaties to buy a new house with more bedroom and yard space for his kids. He kept showing reluctance and coming up with reasons that she considered lame.

“I’d have to rebuild my workshop, and I just got my office the way I like it.”

“I think you’re just afraid of change,” she accused.

Consultants are good at breaking tension. “Honey,” he said. “I just sell change; I don’t do change.”

They both laughed. In the end they bought the house.

People do fear loss, loss of status, loss of financial security, loss of familiar routine, loss of certainty. So if the outcome of the change is unknown, they may assume it will mean loss for them and push back.

This is why Niccolò Machiavelli  said at the beginning of the sixteenth century,

“There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.”

Change has no natural constituency in the way that the status quo has. So the job of the leader is to enlist followers.

I used to talk with leaders about how people change by using this diagram:

I, like many consultants, think in models like this, geometric shapes connected by arrows. I learned that  about  26% of the population thinks this way. That means that 74% doesn’t think like this. So I learned to describe it more in paragraph terms.

People come to some insight – e.g. what I am currently doing isn’t working – I’m sitting on my couch eating ice cream and not losing weight.

I see someone else moving more than I do and eating less. Eureka! I think I might try that.

I take action . (I eat less and move more.)

It works. I lose weight.

(Note: Most people realize that even losing weight is more complex than that. There are measurements to take, old habits to break, false starts, relapses,  and recriminations to shake, etc. Still with direction, determination,  and disciplined action one can get results. Some more easily than others.)

Leading people in an organization through a change, the leader:

• First shares insight – acknowledges reality (what’s not working, the compelling case for change, the why).
• Then explains the destination – the vision of the changed company.
• Takes action and leads followers to take action
• Measures and shares results.

This is where the complexity comes in. There are many different kinds of change for companies, changes in target customers, changes in products, changes in processes, and technology. There are mergers and acquisitions, changes in financing (like going public or taking on venture capital) and many more.

Some problems companies can improve their way out of, some require radical innovation. Many require companies to get smaller and stronger before growing again. The devil is in the details; the leader must explain the type and context of the change and bring followers along with them.

Another thing that some leaders forget is that for the organization to change the leader must change. Oops.

Change leaders must get people to follow them away from comfortable habits and processes to a new way of doing things that may or may not be better. It is a tough job.

In my consulting work I was often called in to fix a failed change effort. In most cases the cause of the failure was that the leaders had underestimated the people side of the change and had devoted little energy to changing themselves.

Perhaps the leaders or their people had developed change fatigue and went looking for yet another methodology. Perhaps they hadn’t thought about interim metrics to show when they were off track. My approach was always the same: get back to talking about the objectives of the change and look for ways to achieve interim results.

I never heard anyone say “Spare iny change?” Nor was I ever tempted to say, “No man, change comes from within.” But it does.