About ten or twelve years into my career, my manager asked me to document the processes we used in development. I did as asked and there were around fifteen or so activities in the flow. He rejected this on the basis that "we can't do all that, it's too much overhead". I pointed out that we not only did we do all those things but that they were all essential, and in fact most (if not all) of them were made up of sub-tasks. I worked out that what he really wanted was a set of stage gates. My mistake in delivering what was asked for not what was needed (hard lesson to learn).

To your point that "The best motivation for changing how people work is pain", I heard a definition of processes years ago that is relevant: "Processes are the scar tissue of our mistakes." - I wish I could remember who said that.