How To Face Resistance: Don’t Fight the Storm

You can use resistance on your favor rather than fighting back.

“If you are not facing resistance, it is because you are not pushing too hard” - Bob Sutton, Innovation Professor at Stanford

Resistance has a bad reputation. When facing opposition, we tend to feel stuck or fight back. Actually, building on a phrase that Bob Sutton repeated over and over when I was at Stanford last winter, resistance is caused by change. When it happens, it is a good signal. Instead of fighting it, we can use that energy in our favor. This story is about how we dealt with resistance in the shape of two storms: a natural catastrophe and an internal one.

Ideas at the Speed of a Hurricane

On September 2014, when Mexico’s Los Cabos, a tourist destination favored by Americans, was about to get ready for its peak season, it was suddenly hit by a hurricane. Our client the Mexico Tourism Board called us immediately to help with the crisis.

As I discussed in previous pieces, the traditional advertising development process resembles an assembly line. Creative work moves from one d…