You’re in charge but they won’t change? You’re not alone

President Roosevelt felt that trying to get anything to change in the US Navy was like punching a feather bed: “You punch it with your right and you punch it with your left until you are finally exhausted, and then you find the damn bed just as it was before you started punching” (Neustadt, 1990).

Continuing the bed theme, the Director-General of the Australian public service broadcaster saw his task as, “like pushing a mattress up a spiral staircase”.

Whilst organisational crises can bring about rapid change in a short timeframe, change is generally a much more gradual process. This is because organisations are an amalgam of a variety of elements, including people, culture, structure, processes and values. You are more likely to achieve change if you can simultaneously pull on as many of these levers as you can. Even then, the process is not easy and usually takes time.

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