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iQuestions Faculty, Rodney Cox 
 
 
Question: 
 
Why is my team so resistant to change? 
 
Answer: 
 
Change is inevitable. Why do some people accept change readily, and 
others tend to resist it?  
 
What if we could give you an answer to that question? 
 
I’d like for you to visualize a track meet. Visualize the four or five or 
six lanes around the track, a starting point, a pass of a baton if it was 
a relay race, and the finish of the race. 
 
If I were to ask you: “What’s the most important element of that relay 
race?” we might argue about that all day long. “It’s the start. If we 
don’t start well, we won’t finish well.” “If we don’t finish, then…” 
 
Where does objective reality come from in this whole area of change? 
 
The most critical part of the track meet, the most critical part of the 
relay, is the pass of the baton. In change and managing change inside 
of your leadership team, the pass of that baton is critically important 
to you as well.  
 
Some of us like a very predictable environment. If we want a 
predictable environment do you think we’d want things to go slower or 
faster? 
 
Sure, slower.  
 
 
 
So would that mean that the individual that wants things to go slower 
would tend to resist change?  
 
Well, sure.  
 
But what if it wasn’t that they resisted change, they just needed to 
understand how the change impacted their plan? 
 
It’s not that the individual that’s on the predictable side of that scale 
resists change. It’s that they need to understand how the change 
impacts their plan, because they’re planners. 
 
We call them finishers. They don’t start a whole lot of things, but they 
finish everything they start.  
 
There’s another side of this change mechanism, another side of this 
change scale, that we call “the dynamic side.”  
 
There are some individuals that want things to move very quickly. 
They love change, and the faster, the better in the pay. They don’t 
have a plan, they plan along the way.  
 
We call them starters. They start lots of things, but they don’t finish 
very many things. 
 
God has placed both starters and finishers on the team. We need 
those individuals that can start the projects. But we also need to learn 
how to pass that baton efficiently and effectively so that the finishers 
can do what they do what they do best, and that’s finish the things 
that we’ve started.  
 
We need both on the team in order to create a championship team.  
Cox -2- 
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