Sometimes people learn the wrong lessons and fuse with the wrong shifts and changes. Failures not followed by the counseling of trusted and reliable advisers can readily lead to perverse behavior and a sour-grapes attitude.

With the exception of unequivocal job or life failure or experience of extreme adversity, we don’t know how to specify exactly what will create the emotionality that catalyzes an individual’s change in orientation.

Every manager and every professional in the “change” business understands that advising an individual to change his or her orientation is a hit-and-miss proposition in which serendipity inevitably plays the kingpin role.