The constant in today’s workplace and personal lives is the reality that change happens and change matters. The ability to acknowledge, understand, embrace, and actively participate in change matters is essential to performance execution success for individuals and organizations in both challenging times and in times of success.

To fast-track change in a world that may be to some moving too fast, consider these three models for performance execution (implementation) success instead of performance resistance and passiveaggressive experiences.

First, the basic rule of psychology reveals that individuals and groups will change a behavior, action, or opinion for one of only two core reasons.

In the absence of either one of these two basic rules human tendency is to resist and attempt to remain static with what one has been doing all along. This may seem to breed complacency or challenge among those you engage. So to avoid challenge, conflicts, and confrontation or worse yet, find yourself in a world that has passed you by and all but made you obsolete, consider:

1. Pain Factor = If you illustrate to others that by not adapting or adopting to the new change approach (idea, policy, program, person, campaign, law, rule, regulation, way of life, etc.) their lifestyle will decline, get worse, become painful, or they will have a loss, injury, or death, people will acknowledge and embrace the change. The conversation will not be about resistance at this point, yet it may be about a need for further understanding or education so as to know how to embrace and actively participate in the new change.

2. Pleasure Factor = If you illustrate to others that by adapting or adopting to the new change approach (idea, policy, program, person, campaign, law, rule, regulation, way of life, etc.) their lifestyle will improve, get better, become easier, or that they will have a gain or positive experience, people will acknowledge and embrace the change. The conversation will not be about resistance at this point, yet it may be about a need for further understanding or education so as to know how to embrace and actively participate in the new change.

Second, for change to matter and for any change processes to actually accelerate, people and groups must intellectually evolve through three need states. Regulate how you communicate, what you communicate, and to whom you sequentially communicate. Ensure everyone chronologically works through the change and that you gain nonconfrontational feedback if you want change to matter and people to focus on what matters.

1. Awareness and Acknowledgement = First, make sure everyone involved in the change process is made aware of why this change is even being discussed and why it is a reality to be addressed. Only when your brain is made aware of a need, challenge, problem, opportunity, etc., will it embrace doing something about it. If this critical step is not addressed, then resistance and denial will be the reality within your head and from others’ mouths.

2. Interaction and Understanding = Second, make sure you and those involved in any change process have the skill and knowledge set to address what comes before them, and the desire and attitude to want to assume a participatory role. Ensure all of the vested parties are equally involved and held accountable for the change process to achieve implementation success, which may include a conversation around resources, finances, human capital, and time constraints to ensure change matters for the good.

3. Commitment = Third, people will only engage and participate when they see that the change really does matter and that by embracing the change, life will be better and that pain may, in the long run, be eliminated or avoided. Recognize and reward participants appropriately if you want change to become a reality factor in your world whereby people do not resist but accept it.

So why do so many people resist change and refuse to recognize that change does matter? It runs the gamut of excuses and reasons. From a large percentage of individuals who have actually learned how to play the system and game to avoid change yet reap the benefits of change to complacency and a lack of a sense of urgency among constituents today.

People want to be understood, respected, and involved because that calms the hostility or denial factor of barriers to performance execution. The reason most fight change is an internal psychological need for:

1. Acknowledgement = Hostile change challengers often times seek to be recognized for where they mentally are at the time of a change, and their fear or feeling of lack of being recognized has lead them to learn from past behaviors that the route to acknowledgement is hostility. So empathetically acknowledging them creates the opportunity to engage them and invite them to participate in the change process.

2. Ownership = Once you and others step to the acceptance plate of change being the new reality, the faster others will come around to your thinking and position. What causes further denial and resistance is when no one assumes ownership yet points fingers at everyone else to do things!

3. Action = Change happens when someone starts by taking action. Any action!

To fast-track change in a world that may be to some moving too fast, consider these three models for performance execution (implementation) success and blend them into the ABC (A+B=C) Model for Change Matters. Consider:

A = ACTIVATING event for which there will always be one

B = your BEHAVIOR that is associated or blended into the Activating Events

C = CONSEQUENCE or outcome that is manifested by the merging of the A+B

Whether your reality is the blending together of individual organizations to survive and thrive in the future, or the blending of your once solo abilities with another for combined synergy and success, here are three paths to greatness for consideration.

So change matters and the ABCs of managing change for the performance execution and success impact one’s needs today can be attained by applying these three models and only by first focusing on what BEHAVIORS you can initiate as an overlay to your organization’s or your individual actions as you engage others!