I think what you're doing is admirable and just wanted to wish you good luck!

I think what you're doing is admirable and just wanted to wish you good luck! I've been fighting similar battles within government (non-US) and it can be both very frustrating and very rewarding. Frustrating because 'being right' is almost never the way to win the argument. Although I'm terrible at this myself, I've observed that opposition to change is best overcome by persistence. The best change agent I've worked with used a particular (and highly effective) technique that I've since termed 'objection exhaustion'. He'd hold a meeting of all the 'major stakeholders' (read: people who's stuff we were messing with, but who's co-operation we needed) once a week/fortnight to update them on our progress (read: grind them down into submission). When someone raised an objection to our ideas, he'd listen carefully, take their concerns seriously and commit to examining the issue and bringing findings back to the next meeting. We'd then do that, and most of the time present evidence at the next meeting that showed the objection was baseless (in a nice, 'give them an out', kind of way). Tedious as it was, by doing this over and over we'd exhaust all their objections and they'd be forced to agree with us (or continue to object for no apparent reason and look like a mindless fool in front of their senior colleagues). Depressingly, the true but hidden objection is usually "don't touch my stuff" or "don't reduce my budget". Objection exhaustion works great here: few public servants are shameless enough to admit, perhaps even to themselves, that these are the reasons for their opposition.

Posted by spangry on Jul 3, 2015, 1:00 PM

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