Every week we hear, from our clients, that leaders want “no surprises”; or advocate “no sudden moves”; or a “steady as she goes” philosophy. Leaders ask their employees to “don’t rock the boat”.
This fear of change is borne out by the data. Some researchers have suggested that up to 70% of all change initiatives fail. Digital transformations perform even worse, with an 88% failure rate. The success of change initiatives is reported to be less than 34%.
The failure is thought to be down to two factors, inadequate leadership and employee resistance to change, but employee resistance is largely due to poor leadership as well.
It’s hardly surprising then that 50% of leaders, who have minimal change competence, are unable to determine whether their attempts to change things have really worked.
This immunity to change is compounded by 71% of employees reporting change fatigue, and 83% saying they lack the tools to effectively manage change.
So why are leaders so bad at change, and why are people so resistant?
Part of the reason is our identity is rooted in stability.
The problem starts in childhood. At about one year old the very first version of our Self emerges. And this proto-Self is rooted in our physical existence. A one-year-old starts to realise they exist when they bite their thumb and it hurts, but when they bite the table, it doesn’t. They can feel their gums on the table, but they can’t feel the table.
They repeat the experiment. They bite their foot and that hurts. Again, they can feel their gums and their foot. But when they bite the spoon, they feel nothing. The spoon is “not me”.
So, it starts to dawn on them that they exist as a physical entity. “I’m the thing that hurts when you bite it”. They don’t have this thought, but on some level they realise they exist as a physical entity.
You can witness the emergence of this physical identity if you watch a one-year-old stand in front of a mirror.
They look in the mirror and raise their hand, and the person in the mirror raises their hand at the same time. They stick their tongue out and the person in the mirror sticks their tongue out. They become fascinated with this person in the mirror as they start to recognise that this person is “me”.
This external validation of identity is consolidated by the infant’s consciousness.
Conscious evolves in living things because it confers survival advantage. If you can hold, in your awareness, even for half a second where a predator may be, then you can survive. Consciousness maps our external environment to save our life.
What’s interesting about the maps we create of our external environment is that they are very dynamic and change rapidly. If we move our head slightly, we see a very different landscape.
But consciousness also maps our interior environment.
It creates a representation of our blood pressure, our breathing, our pH and our heart rate, for example.
The difference between the exterior maps and the interior maps is that our interior maps don’t change much at all. Our pH is controlled within very tight parameters, so is our blood pressure and all our homeostatic data streams.
As infants, we start to understand that “I’m the thing that is not changing”.
This is one of the reasons why human beings are so resistant to change.
Stability is part of our identity, it’s who we are.
An infant realises their exterior world changes a lot, but it’s OK because “I” don’t.
“I don’t change”.
So, if we want to lead people through change, we must expect a natural immunity to change. People experience change as a threat to their identity, to their existence.
To make change happen successfully takes courage and change competence.
Few leaders realise that there are 12 steps that we must navigate if we want to drive change successfully. These are described, in detail, in my book Step Change: The Leader’s Journey.
The first task in leading change is to be prepared to take people out of their comfort zone (step 1) and be prepared to make them uncomfortable (step 2). It’s easy for people to get stuck at step 2, sometimes for years. In their discomfort, people want things to go “back to normal”. To try and reduce the pain, or threat, of change many people resort to drugs and alcohol as an anaesthetic. Or they distract themselves, keeping busy with a whole range of activities so they don’t have to face the necessity of change.
But leaders don’t have this luxury. They have to drive change and push people through the discomfort. Often this simply results in increased resistance (step 3). Resistance can be subtle passive aggression, ghosting, masterful inactivity or explicit opposition.
However, change competent leaders eventually figure out how to instil confidence and build trust, both of which are necessary to create forward momentum. People start to appreciate that resistance is futile, even if justified. The resistance subsides (step 4).
Once the resistance has subsided sufficiently, we eventually reach the moment of truth (step 5). We must decide to change. We must commit ourselves to a new future. Progress can derail here too. Many people say they are committed to change but there’s little evidence of commitment – it’s just words.
If people are truly committed, you’ll find evidence that they’ve “burnt the boats” and made it impossible to go back.
Even after crossing this threshold and committing to a different future nothing has changed, yet. Even after committing it’s necessary to start planning (step 6) before the change can start (step 7). This means we need to find the inner and outer resources we will need for the journey ahead.
So, immunity to change can be due to many things. There are obstacles to overcome in every one of the first six steps. These obstacles may be ignorance, pain, distraction, fear, lack of motivation, lack of clarity and many more. To successfully navigate all 12 steps requires leaders to develop change competence.
Each step on the Change Wheel requires:
If leaders assume everyone is at the same step, even the most well-designed change programmes can fail. What looks like resistance is often people being asked to operate one step ahead of where they really are.
Most leadership teams talk about change as if everyone is standing in the same place, looking at the same future, asking the same questions.
They aren’t.
Some people are already experimenting with what’s next (step 7).
Others are trying to make sense of what it means for them (step 4)
Some are still stabilising what currently works (step 1).
This isn’t a mindset issue or a lack of commitment.
It’s a readiness issue.
Change only works when leaders understand where people actually are — not where they hope they’ll be.
A practical way to apply Step Change thinking is to map your team across the three broad stages of readiness.
1. Early-stage readiness
Early-stage readiness is characterised by resistance. People are simply not yet ready to change. They’re often unsure why change is necessary and unclear what need to change and how to change things.
What people need for the resistance to subside is:
What often goes wrong at this stage:
Leaders can inhibit progression with excessive explanation. They can make things worse by waiting until everyone is on the same page rather than dealing with people individually, depending on what step they’re stuck at.
Poor leadership can result in:
2. Mid-stage readiness
Mid-stage readiness is usually where most people are and is characterised by lack of commitment. Most people are not actively resisting, but they’re not motivated to change either. They lack motivation because they simply don’t understand how change benefits them personally. They’re open, but cautious.
What people need to commit to the change is an explanation of:
What goes wrong at this stage:
If commitment is only verbal this can significantly impair progress, creating uncertainty and systemic tensions. Leaders must look for objective evidence of commitment rather than just accepting people’s declarations of commitment.
Poor leadership can result in:
If leaders fail to gain real commitment from their stakeholders, then polarisation occurs between those who claim they’re committed and those who’ve actually committed. Surface compliance, even if unconscious or well-intentioned, can prevent real change.
3. Late-stage readiness
People at this late stage are on the verge of changing but before this can occur, they must start serious planning. Planning is proof of real readiness. Insufficient planning suggests desire and intent may be there but there may also be a lack of practical readiness.
What leaders need for change to start is:
What goes wrong at this stage:
If there is insufficient planning, then change may fail despite the full commitment of leaders and the team. The adage of “fail to plan then plan to fail” was never more true. It’s key that leaders don’t rush too quickly, on the back of a high from the commitment of the team into the first change experiments.
Poor leadership can result in:
Poor planning can create chaos and put the entire change process at risk. Failure at this late stage can create real cynicism, particularly if people don’t understand why change may fail despite commitments.
Change doesn’t come naturally to most organisations, teams or individuals. It requires change competence and an understanding of the 12 steps of change.
Leaders must judge their team’s readiness and know how to work with resistance, commitment and planning before change can ever start.
Even after change begins there are still 6 more steps to manage if leaders are to have any hope of delivering the promise of change – growth, more speed and greater success.