Mark Twain once said, "The only person who likes a change is a baby in a wet diaper" (Hersey et al, 2001, p. 376).  Individuals naturally resist change.  Strebel has described this as a reaction against the stated and unstated contracts employees feel they have with an organization, which come under doubt when any change begins (Strebel, 1996, p. 86 - 92).  In today's environment of constant upheaval caused by cost saving efforts, realignments, outsourcing, etc., a change effort will bring many questions into the minds of employees, including; whether their position will be eliminated; if they will have a cut in pay, bonus, benefits, pensions; if they will need to produce more or do with less resources; if they will be relocated; or if they will face a multitude of other negative consequences because of what the company is proposing.    With  apprehension about the change, rumors swell and the minds of employees are diverted because of trepidations concerning the upcoming change.  As a result, energy and efforts are dampened or diverted elsewhere, and performance suffers. 

At a corporate level it may be easy to chart on paper the projected improvements a change will have on performance, raising results from point A to point B, through a number of steps, to help the company arrive at the desired outcome.  The increased performance outcomes of a change effort can be measured in financial and production outcomes, improved products or service, improved customer or employee satisfaction or other measures.  However, growth toward the desired outcome is not likely to come in a smooth straight line upward due to the fact that employee performance is likely to drop as new changes are begun, due to resistance, fear, confusion, distractions, lack of motivation, etc. 

Understanding the role that human attitude has on the performance curve is helpful to further understand the important role that leaders have in improving performance parameters of the change project.  The company may graph the plotted improvement in performance as measured by increased production, financial returns, satisfaction surveys or other measurements that will occur as a result of the change effort over time.  However, the natural human tendency to resist change can detract from performance goals set out by the company, either diminishing or delaying the returns, or worse, causing neutral or even negative improvements, despite huge efforts and expense of the organization.  

 The consequences of the performance cycle can have negative consequences for individuals (less bonus, loss of pride, future impact on review ratings, spiral negativity which could worsen results further, etc), on the team leaders (not making targets, less bonus, lack of ability to maintain team motivation, etc), and for the larger organization (slower time in implementing change, not reaching target outcomes, etc).  Perhaps for this reason there are statistics which show that success rates for change efforts in Fortune 1000 companies are less than 50% and even could be as low as 20% (Harvard Business Review, 1998, p. 140).  Applying a process to help lessen the dip in performance and shorten the time to implement the change and regain performance would be beneficial to the corporation, the manager and the individual employees. 

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