The myth of "resistance to change"
One of the more misunderstood ideas in change management is “resistance to change.”
It makes a complex human response sound like a behavioural problem that needs to be managed. The psychology suggests something more interesting is happening.
Harvard researchers Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey introduced the idea of “competing commitments”. The idea that someone can genuinely support a change while, often unconsciously, protecting something that the change threatens.
That might be their sense of competence, autonomy, status, credibility, control, or simply the comfort of knowing how to succeed in the current environment.
So when somebody says, “I understand why we are doing this” but continues to work in exactly the same way, it isn't necessarily a communication failure.
There may be another commitment quietly winning. Behavioural economics helps explain why.
Why the old way still feels safer
"Status quo bias means we tend to favour what is familiar and already understood."
And because the downside of change is often immediate; learning a new system, losing expertise, changing routines, giving up control… while the benefits are somewhere in the future, the old way can remain psychologically attractive long after the business case for change has been established.
Leaders and employees don't experience change at the same time
There is another dynamic leaders need to recognise too: leaders and employees don't experience change at the same point in time.
Recent research by BCG, explored in the Harvard Business Review Press book How Change Really Works, describes this as ‘change distance.’
Senior leaders may have spent months discussing the problem, challenging assumptions, considering options and gradually becoming comfortable with the decision.
Then the change is announced.
For the leadership team, that can feel like the end of a long decision-making process.
For everyone else, it is Day One.
We sometimes interpret the questions, uncertainty and hesitation that follow as resistance, when people may simply be starting the sense-making process that leaders completed months earlier.
That distinction matters.
Because if the diagnosis is resistance, the response tends to be more communication, more persuasion and more messaging about the benefits.
But if the issue is loss of agency, uncertainty, identity or confidence, communication alone won't solve it.
Good change management therefore needs to go deeper.
What good change management does differently
And perhaps most importantly:
Don't assume adoption because implementation is complete.
A platform being launched is not change.
A process being documented is not change.
Training being completed is not change.
Because lasting change isn’t imposed. It’s designed around the realities of human behaviour.
References for Research Quoted:
https://www.bcg.com/capabilities/people-strategy/how-change-really-works