How Resilient are You to Change?

We all now have our new plans set out for 2026. Yeah, right?

But whether you have or have not yet done the compulsory planning exercise, it will be a total waste if you have not read this blog post and applied the science of the changes that are required for you to actually implement some of your plans.

Ready? Here it is.

Change management is not, nor ever will be, a hype thing. Coming home from a high emotional event at a concert, motivational session or church, may fill you with all the right motivation for change and ambition for a new future, but most cases, by the time you have negotiated the traffic, gotten back to your desk, all ambition has left the building and you continue to do what you have done, hoping in some small way for a better future.

So, let’s take a scientific formula and apply your planned changes to it and see how you measure up:

Change can only happen when (AU X VD X AFS)/3 > RTC. Let me unpack each of these.

The first part is a product (multiplication) of three scores. So, if any of these are zero, it nullifies the entire process.

AU: Accepted Unhappiness (score from 0 to 5). This is the amount that you have actually accepted, deep within, that your current status is unhappy and needs to change. For a lot of people, they just seem to be happy to be unhappy, so their score is 0.

VD: Vision Destination (score from 0 to 5). Do you have a desired destination where you need to be to replace your current destination? It may not be crystal clear, and it may change, but starting with at least a 3 is better than another zero.

AFS: Agreed First Step (score from 0 to 5). You do not need an entire project plan with all the steps mapped out with identified critical paths and dependencies. Just the first big step. This will change your destination from where you were to one step closer to your next destination.

Multiply these three scores together and divide by 3. Now the final score.

RTC: Resistance To Change (score from 0 to 5). This is your score of how willing you are to make the actual change. I have met many people with the best intentions in the world, but they often sit with a big fat 5/5 and are never able to get anything done or implemented.

If your first score is greater than the second, a change will happen. If not, sustainable change will not occur, regardless of how much emotional effort you put into it. It is as simple as that.