You know this already. People resist most any new program, process and of course the big daddy of them all, new technology that they didn't propose. And it makes so much sense. People are in the positions of authority and leadership that they are in, because they think for themselves. If they don't have any pain associated with what THEY are doing, it's unlikely that even a highly productive associate can easily get their buy-in. "Better" is rarely enough. An associate has to show that the idea and implementation has to relieve a considerable amount of pain, and that pain isn't a nagging associate - even a super skilled one with the organization's best interest at heart. If the person who wants to do things better doesn't have total budget control...and let's face it there's always more than one person in control of any budget, then the associate must (note I didn't say "should",) must employ the classic 'find the pain' argument. It's a skill everyone should attempt to learn. There are many levels of pain that will work. But trust me, if you're only talking discomfort, you can't get what needs to be done. Anyone without sufficient pain will opt to keep things the way they are a little longer or worse yet, protect their "system" at all costs because they know how it works. It's really that simple.

It's important to understand and appreciate that the success of anything new requires involvement and leadership from someone that initially isn't all that interested. You KNOW that you've got a great new process or software that will work and work much, much better than the way things are, but that won't matter if you can't "buy" the person off...just kidding. The way to get something done is to find the motivating pain of the person who needs to approve it, and to do that you need to be great at asking questions so the person discovers his or her pain. You have to let them discover that you are in pain. Heck, the whole department or company is in pain, and that pain is their responsibility to solve. That's what they do. They solve problems. But because they prefer to solve problems THEY see, your job is to help them discover and then solve. Their pain will likely not be related to your real operational pain, because they don't do what you do

So do yourself a favor, try hard to move through the intellectual side of things. Address the technical and intellectual issues of course, but remember when YOU help someone discover their pain, they trust and believe in you, and isn't that a much better position to be in? You instantly become their "doctor" and you didn't have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on medical school.