Source: Hard personal experience.

[[Turn the Ship Around]] also has a passage about this (though I don’t love the “subservient dog” in the metaphor):

When you bring in something new, something that has never been seen before, you can talk about it and some will get it. On Santa Fe, we did have some chiefs who got it immediately. Senior Chief Worshek got it. Chief Larson got it. Some would get it soon; others would take longer. I discovered that what happens when you explain a change is that the crew hears what you say, but they are thinking, “Oh yeah, I know what he’s talking about. That’s like it was on the USS Ustafish.” They hear and think they know what you mean, but they don’t. They’ve never had a picture of what you are talking about. They can’t see in their imagination how it works. They are not being intentionally deceitful; they just are not picturing what you are picturing.

Moreover, if they understand what you mean they might be skeptical that this new way of doing business, which is different from anything they’ve seen before, could be better. How is it possible to be in the Navy for (fill in the years) and not have seen this?

In order to help me remember this and keep my cool, I had a poster made. I got the idea from an article titled “It’s a Dog’s Life,” which I’d read in the November 1995 issue of Fast Company. It profiled VeriFone’s then-CEO Hatim Tyabji. In the poster, I am standing in front of my dog Barclay saying “Sit.” The dog was standing. The first eight frames were identical. “Sit, sit, sit,” etc. No recriminations, no admonishments, just “sit.” In the ninth and last frame, Barclay is sitting and the caption is “Good dog.” I hung this on the back of my stateroom door. Since my door was open most of the time, visitors didn’t see it, but I would.

Similar to [[Externalise ideas in pictures or notes to build shared understanding and highlight misalignment]]