Change Can Be Scary

When it comes to being a lean company, it takes a lot of work to get there. You don't just decide one day that you need to run lean that you need to d a better job of getting rid of all the waste that is bringing your business down. These are big decisions, they are not easy to do and you have to put a great deal of work and effort into making them work.
Anybody can sit around a conference room and talk about change, talk about making things better, but it is a different story entirely to get these changes implemented and the ideas accepted. It is hard enough getting the ideas out into the open, getting people to listen to the ideas, but getting them to accept and help implement the ideas is the real trick.
Not everybody is going to get on board immediately, in fact there will more than likely be some resistance to the ideas and it will be somebody's job to quell these fears and apprehensions and to explain why the changes are better than the status quo. But always remember that the push back and the fighting is less with you than with the actual act of changing. Now, if you go into the situation forcing your ideas and acting like a dictator that writes the new rules for everybody else to follow, then yes, you will have push back against you personally.
However, if you go into the situation openly, with your ideas and your considerations of others showing through, then they will want to help you, although they still may perhaps have difficulties with the concept of change. Individuals, most individuals have difficulty when it comes to change. They do not like it. Change is hard because it is unfamiliar and new. People like comfortable and familiar, like an old pair of sneakers that are beat up, but so reliable and known. It works the same with change in the workplace.
Even though everyone knows that the change is needed, improvements need to be made, the actual act of change is hard for people to swallow. You have to make this bitter pill taste a little bit better, a little bit sweeter. If you can manage that, then everybody's job is going to be a little bit easier and the changes will actually start to happen and what's even better, the changes might actually stick around.