Everyone understands the need for change, but people are nonetheless creatures of habit. Too much change is unsettling and will spark a backlash. Make a show of respecting the old way of doing things. Evoke revered history and cloak your changes in familiar rituals.

People understand the need for change conceptually but are unsettled by a change that seems drastic or chaotic, or that affects them personally. We’re creatures of habit and change upsets our routines and expectations.

Some change provokes immediate resistance. Too much change too quickly creates anxiety that will eventually boil over. Every revolution, no matter how welcome at first, eventually sparks a strong backlash. Never reform too much at once

However, there are ways to make change more appealing and less threatening to people, and therefore more successful.

An effective approach is to employ a comforting deception: preach change, and even make changes behind the scenes, but maintain the comforting appearance of familiar institutions and traditions.

A simple gesture like using an old title, or keeping the same number for a group, will tie you to the past and support you with the authority of history.

Meaning, on the surface you may appear to support the past, but inside, you are manoeuvring in ways that support your own causes of a new change — politicians are masters at this.

When Charles Darwin published his ideas for evolution, he faced fiercer opposition from his fellow scientists than from religious authorities. His theories challenged too many fixed ideas.

Jonas Salk ran into the same wall with his radical innovations in immunology.

Max Plank ran into the same issues with his revolutionizing of physics. Plank later wrote of the scientific opposition he faced, a very astute comment.

It’s kind of true, isn’t it? The old traditions of the past we’ve witnessed over the last century are being forced out because the previous generation before us are shrinking smaller. Everything from marriage, equality, race, religion are all shifting us globalization, technology and we, evolve (or even devolve). And the cycle will repeat over and over.