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You can lead a horse to water…. But a pencil needs to be led!

Written by: Nicholas Fraser

Article Overview: So say the immortal words of Stan Laurel (and that’s another fine mess you have gotten me into Stanley!). But what might you ask does this have to do with management and mentoring? Well in my three and half years in mentoring practice and 35 years in business, one thing I have learnt, and rather painfully too is that you can lead Directors, management, staff or businesses as a whole to the water but you certainly cannot make them drink.

You can lead a horse to water…. But a pencil needs to be led!

You can lead a horse to water…. But a pencil needs to be led!

So say the immortal words of Stan Laurel (and that’s another fine mess you have gotten me into Stanley!).

But what might you ask does this have to do with management and mentoring? Well in my three and half years in mentoring practice and 35 years in business, one thing I have learnt, and rather painfully too is that you can lead Directors, management, staff or businesses as a whole to the water but you certainly cannot make them drink.

From an individual perspective having engaged with MD’s and their teams in the recent past and with employees and managers in my previous roles you immediately see the DREC Change Model taking effect. Immediately change is proposed the reactions of Denial, Avoidance and Resistance come into play. Even if you can step change people through these barriers I have found the underlying issues of sub conscious resistance and to be honest capacity (or lack of) to change. In a sense a lot of my activity is about empowering current followers to become leaders; sadly in a lot of cases I fail.

This is a tough call for a Mentor and/or a manager. One tries to help but it is always the client’s privilege to accept or not what is being offered. I spend time with my professional supervisor reviewing episodes of this nature and he repeatedly reminds me that the power lies with the client, not with me. As a driven person, keen to help this proves a difficult lesson to accept.

And from a business perspective this is worthy of consideration too as a group dynamic problem. I have in my career led technology implementations and new business diversification initiatives. Working within companies and with partner companies one can see the embedded cultural resistance to change. In the 1980’s I worked as European Business Development/New Products Manager. This to bring new products into a business that was dependent on a product that was being eroded by new technology developments. The capacity for change was low and that led to an increased resistance to change. The end result was in my frustration with the corporate entity as a whole and overall failure of the change project.

So what does this tell us? Well I have a set of conditions for plan/change success, namely

Pressure for change

Without a clear pressure for change across the whole company from the top down to the lowest individual involved, if there is no pressure then nothing will happen as it will always be put to the bottom of the list.

A shared clear vision

If there is not a clarity of vision shared by everyone (and I mean everyone) then you get a fast start that eventually fades




Capacity for change

This condition is probably where I came in. If the organisation or the individual does not have the capacity (and that includes the desire) for change then anxiety and frustration will surely follow.

Actionable first steps

Without a simple set of actions that can get people on the road to change, you end up with haphazard efforts and false starts.

Regular monitoring

And finally without reviewing progress and making people accountable for change really happening there is no focus and a reversion to old ways.

Change is necessary but without the above conditions frustration occurs. If I am engaged to help instigate change (be the catalyst if you like) then I endeavour to focus on these five conditions to make it happen. But I always remind myself that it is the client’s choice not mine.

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