The question has come up often enough in the last few weeks that I imagine I am supposed to explore it and declare what I know and believe about it. The question comes in different forms but is, at its heart, about resistance. “Why don’t people change their work when they know that what they are doing isn’t right for them?” “Why do you say in your book that we have only one genius? I don’t believe that.” “Isn’t all of this self-reflection just a bunch of navel-gazing by people who can’t get themselves in gear?” All of those questions are about resistance.

At an early point in my career as a change agent, I engaged in lengthy discussions with other change agents about how to “deal with” or “overcome” resistance. In retrospect it seems that these discussions were mostly about how to get people to see things our way, or do what we thought they should do. I gave up on all such discussions after I met the pit crew.

The pit crew was a group of guys who really knew about race cars. They were, in fact, the actual pit crew for a car that was entered in a race at Pocono Raceway. I once lived a few miles from the track, and I met them at a party on the eve of their race. They explained to me that the job of making a car go fast was one of overcoming resistances, such as resistance within the engine, air resistance, and tire-against-the-road resistance.

Here is the catch: if you do that job too well, a race car becomes a dangerous out-of-control flying machine, crashing into grandstands or otherwise causing havoc. Fail to overcome enough resistance and you have a slug of a car; overcome too much and you have an unguided missile with a good chance of killing someone. As another illustration of the danger of eradicating resistance, one member of the pit crew pointed out that AIDS kills by destroying the body’s resistance.

So some level of resistance is healthy—no, make that essential.

Nobody ever calls me to say, “Dick, I want you to help me maintain the status quo.” My work is about change, and change usually does meet with resistance. But I now respond to it much differently than I once did.

I gave up on discussions about dealing with or overcoming resistance because I no longer believe that it is my job to do that. My job may be pointing out resistance and its potential consequences. It may be helping people or organizations bring their resistance to light and decide when and how to “deal with” or “overcome” it themselves. Or it may be guiding them through the process after that decision has been made. But decide that resistance should/ought to/must be overcome? Uh-uh, not me. Unless the situation is really dire, it is too dangerous to me and to others for me to try to make that decision. And even where the situation is really dire, it is still someone else’s resistance and beyond my control.

The pit crew helped me learn to respect resistance. Sometimes people really do need it. Or they think they need it, which is very close to the same thing.

— Dick Richards