The Challenge

Resistance to change

Published by Esteban Glas on January 3rd, 2007 | This post lacks all category except for: Blogs, Business, Lenovo

I was “inspired” to write this post after seeing comments on a couple of posts at design matters and inside the box blogs, In particular “Who really listens these days?” and “Latest Designs from across the seas” postings and, the feedback they got from the audience.

Comments where somewhat harsh towards those posts; and I wondered why that happened; besides some of the individuals who commented so critically had praised Lenovo on other places / posts / their blogs.

Once again analogies with the music world come to mind to help me try to understand why it happened.

If you ever followed a band that evolved with time you’ve seen it happen. I saw the phenomenon innumerable times, and read about it a lot as well. For example, Pink Floyd “changed” it’s musical direction several times. And each time they were resisted by their fanbase. When they abandoned Psychedelia (in Meddle and more noticeably on the Dark Side of the Moon) their LSD-based fans and Media Critics (I don’t know if the latter were on LSD…) didn’t like it at all. (If you go to Pink Floyd’s official site and browse to “Dark Side of the Moon SACD release”, and on the pop up click on the link “Historical Info” you’ll see some magazine reviews about the album release and Preview Concerts… none of which is all too positive). With time the albums became classics.

There is some inherent resistance to change in people who devotedly follow  something (no matter what that something is), which is quite understandable. If you really like the subject of your interest it is because you regard them as better than the average, you cling to them; thus, for your understanding that “something” is already good (or perfect), and there is some very human fear that change might or will lead to loosing that special “touch” it has or that it will loose it’s quality or whatever other characteristic made you like it in the first place.

Another important fact that permeates this criticism is that people tastes have become increasingly eclectic, I like blue, you like green, I like my USB on the right side, you like it on the left, I like 4:3 screens you like widescreen and so on. Thus it’s impossible to make everybody happy. Add to this the fact that we are more willing to post a comment or write about something we don’t like and you’ll have a bunch of “bad comments”.
Final word is this “negative” feedback isn’t such. All feedback is good, somehow, some way, even flaming messages and attacks can be turned around and a lesson can be learnt from them (that is unless they are just insults!). All feedback is worth listening, but in my experience, objective criticism (as harsh as it might be) is worth a million bucks.

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