Most people are not obstructionists.

I’ve been reading a lot of change management literature lately, and much ink has been spilled in that field over how best to work with those who resist organizational change. Such resistance takes many forms—it can be active or passive—but it’s always damaging. For every person in an organization who won’t get on board, the chances of successful change diminish.

There are a variety of approaches to working with such people, but most are based on one central premise: People who resist change aren’t trying to be jerks. They’re trying to do the right thing, as they see it.

Efficiency is the watchword of many highly driven, productive people. But sometimes, prioritizing efficiency is a mistake.

I’m currently re-reading Stephen Covey’s classic The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and one of the book’s many pearls of wisdom is this:

Think effectiveness with people and efficiency with things.

Let’s unpack this statement.

Efficiency is completing a task with minimal time and effort, and it should be our objective when we’re simply knocking out tasks. But with people, it’s all about relationships, and one way others gauge the quality of their relationship with us is by noticing how much time we’re willing to give them. Are we there when they need us? And if so, are we checking our watch every couple of minutes?

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods. — Thomas Paine

Here’s the thing with self-help books: most of them are bad.

It hurts me to say so, because I love self-help books. They’ve changed my life in many ways. But self-help is a field that loves easy fixes, tolerates baseless claims, and distrusts credentials, and this means discerning readers must sift through a lot of junk to find a gem.

Warning: I’m about to pat myself on the back in the next paragraph, but bear with me—I promise I’m going somewhere with this.

On Tuesday, I finished taking a course at the university where I work. It was a statistics course—linear regression, specifically—and it was one of the hardest classes I’ve ever taken (grad school included). The concepts were abstract and the problems knotty, demanding a high level of focus and lots of time. With a full-time job, a family, and sundry other commitments, I completed most of the coursework at lunch, in the evenings, and on the weekends (while my saintly wife Sarah picked up some of my share of the housework). It was a legitimately hard course, it was far outside of my comfort zone, and I did well.

Here’s a brief thought experiment.

First, what’s your domain of expertise?

Almost everyone has one or two domains of expertise—areas about which they know far, far more than the average person. We’re often employed in such an area. Your domain of expertise might be farming, software development, music performance, optometry, project management, or the history of the Christian church.

Okay, now imagine meeting a stranger at a party. Your new acquaintance, after asking what you do, starts telling you all about your own field: how it works, what’s wrong with it, and how to reform it. He has no training or experience in your area, he admits, but he’s talking like he does. As the conversation drags on, your mood progresses from puzzled to annoyed to seething. Who does this guy think he is?