This one is uncomfortable. For me to write, and probably for some of you to read. But I’ve watched too many good people get quietly sidelined by a system change to keep dancing around it. You know that moment that nobody puts on the slide deck? It doesn’t show in the RAID log. And it’s not in the adoption metrics. And for sure it’s not in the executive report, because nobody knows what to do with it yet.
It’s when a competent, experienced colleague realizes they don’t know what they’re doing anymore. And I think after some rollouts, you’re not surprised by it. And you get better at noticing it. You can tell from the half-second pause before clicking, or the slightly shorter answers in the stand-up. The person who used to drive the conversation is now just nodding along.
We’ve been telling the same story about resistance for years, and it makes us feel comfortable. We say that it’s political. That it’s attitude. That it’s people who just aren’t “bought in.” That story is convenient and it keeps the problem over there, with them. The thing is, most resistance isn’t defiance. It’s someone protecting the only thing they’ve built over an entire career: the sense that they’re good at what they do. And we’re walking in asking them to start from zero.
Now, a bit of oversharing. It happened to me. Maybe more than once, but one time it was impossible to ignore.
I was supporting a pre-sales roldesiree on top of my change management work. Someone made the decision to migrate from my beautifully interconnected, heavily pivoted, frankly magnificent Excel setup to Salesforce. I was furious. The information is too interconnected. The conclusions can’t be drawn without my critical input. This is the worst idea anyone has ever had. I believed every word of it. Until I found myself presenting on change management in a completely different project talking about resistance, about people clinging to what they know, and I heard myself. I mean, really heard myself. I mean, practice what you preach, right?
So, the way I decided to deal with it: I volunteered. SME for use case gathering, change champion for the rollout. I said to myself, if I was going to be in the room, I’d rather shape it than survive it. It worked. The tool ended up fit for purpose. I added real value to the use cases. But it left bruises. On my ego, mostly. And as difficult as it is for me, that part is worth admitting.
In organizations, competence is currency. It’s how you build credibility, how you earn trust, and how people come to know you. You are the one who has the answer, the one who knows the system cold, the one others come to when things break. Then the new platform arrives (or a new process, an AI tool, you name it) that promises to do in three clicks what used to take you three hours. And just like that, the currency devalues. The person who moved fast now hesitates, and the expert asks beginner questions. What happens next, the confident voice in the room stops speaking up. What is not acknowledged is the reality: that’s an identity problem rather than a technology problem.
And we’re not wired to take identity hits lying down. Behavioral research has shown that people will avoid situations threatening their competence even when growth is the obvious outcome. And honestly, you don’t even need research, just think about the last time you felt lost in front of a group. We protect who we are before we pursue who we can become. So, when leaders ask, “why are they pushing back, this is objectively better?”, they’re missing something. Better can feel like exposure. And exposure is uncomfortable for everyone, but especially for the people who’ve spent years being the ones who don’t need help.
High performers feel it the most. That’s the part nobody says out loud. I watched a senior manager once, someone that I respected for being sharp, not someone who fumbles, that went quiet during a system demo. Then she said, almost to herself: “I don’t like not being good at things.” It wasn’t the tool she was resisting, not even the change. It was the feeling of not being fluent anymore. Of having to think about things that used to be automatic. Once you see that, you can’t unsee it. Or unfeel it.
The silence you’re reading as disengagement? It might be self-protection. The slow adoption you’re labeling as attitude? It might be someone calculating how exposed they look compared to the person next to them. Nicholas Epley’s research at the University of Chicago puts a name to something most of us already sense. We consistently misread what others are thinking because we project our own state onto them. Leaders who feel confident about a change assume the room does too. But confidence doesn’t transfer. It has to be built. And here’s the thing; this kind of resistance doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t push back in meetings. It just… fades. Adoption unravels, and it doesn’t explode with a boom.
So, if you respond to that with more training, you’ve misread the room. If you send another communication email, same. If you push harder on the mandate, you’ve just made the exposure worse. The question was never “how do we enforce adoption?” It was always “how do we protect dignity while things are messy?” That’s a different conversation entirely. And most change programs never have it.
What it actually looks like: you name the awkward phase instead of pretending it won’t exist. You tell people upfront that the first few weeks will feel clunky. That’s expected, that’s not failure. You reward curiosity instead of speed. You create spaces where mistakes are assumed, not judged. And if you’re a leader, you show your own learning curve instead of projecting instant mastery. That one move resets the standard for everyone watching.
None of that is soft. It’s just honest design. We throw around words like agility and innovation like they’re friction-free. They’re not. Growth starts with a dip. Agility requires humility. And humility, if you don’t create the conditions for it, turns into resistance instead. The friction in transformation isn’t the complexity of the tool.
It’s ego. Not the toxic ego, but the human ego. That one is a completely reasonable desire to not look incompetent in front of your peers. Design for that, and things shift. People will actually engage, rather than just comply. Not because the tool is perfect. But because they don’t feel like idiots using it. Forgetting competence isn’t just something we have. It’s something we are.
Shift happens. Daily. And change will fail when we forget how much identity is tangled up in knowing what you’re doing. And the most strategic move in a rollout isn’t making people faster. It’s making it safe to be temporarily bad at something. And then, adoption will begin.
About The Shift Series
Shift Happens is a series exploring how organizations can turn disruption into direction. We write about the real, human side of work, where change, technology, behavior, and leadership collide in ways no framework fully captures.
Every article follows one of the five currents that shape modern work:
The Human Side of Transformation, the heartbeat beneath the strategy.
Change Management as the Missing Discipline, the discipline hiding in plain sight, quietly determining who succeeds.
Technology, Tools + Human Behavior, the space where logic meets instinct, and where most rollouts live or die.
Organizational Structure, Power & Governance, the lines, ladders, and tensions that decide how work truly flows.
Leadership Micro-Shifts, Governance & Operating Models, the small shifts that create disproportionate impact.
We combine lived experience with practical insight. The kind you can apply the same day, not someday.
Shift happens! But with the right mindset, it happens through you.
If your organization is navigating a shift in technology, structure, or culture and needs practical, human-centered support, reach out. This is the work we love! And the work we do best.
