Another myth to be cleared: people are afraid of changes. Just another crap said by some incompetent guru that couldn’t deploy the changes they were supposed to. And there are “justifications” for it: “Oh, the cavemen didn’t like changing because they would be leaving the safety of the cave to go into the wild“. That really doesn’t make much sense, especially considering that the term “cavemen” is scientifically inaccurate: there’s some debate whether humans really lived in caves, or if caves were only used as temporary shelter (Jude Isabella – Nautilus, 2013). Most important: there are lots of evidences that early humans were gatherers and hunters, which means that once the resources were depleted, they had to move somewhere else.
That said, it would be a shallow approach to say that people are averse to changes because cavemen were. Moreover, the statement that people are averse to changes is false. That’s the perfect excuse to give when you are a lame manager that has to deliver a project that will affect other people and you don’t know how to do it. When you are dressed for failure, any excuse can be used as adornment.
But I have seen plenty of people that don’t like changes
Yes, that’s called confirmation bias. You’ve noticed situations where people seemed uncomfortable with new experiences and interpreted that as proof of the truth you wanted to believe. But reality isn’t quite that simple.
One major reason people resist change is cost. And cost isn’t always financial—it can also mean time, effort, or even emotional strain. Every decision involves weighing that cost against the potential benefit. If the balance doesn’t add up, the most logical choice is to walk away.
Think of it this way: imagine you were offered a completely free Latin course. Sounds great, right? But there’s a catch—it requires six hours a day, every day, for three months. Would you take it? A rough guess says 98% of people reading this would decline. Why? Because the course demands a huge time commitment with no guarantee of fluency, and Latin has little practical use today. Even though there’s no monetary cost, the effort required is high, while the perceived value is low.
On the other hand, imagine a job change that comes with a 30% salary increase, shifts from on-site to remote work, and includes all the coaching you need to succeed in the new role. For most people, that would be a much more appealing change. The reason? The costs involved feel minor compared to the benefits.
People are not afraid of changes, they are afraid of spending resources that are limited (their time, their energy, their money, their lives) on something that they are unsure of the benefits, or even worse: that won’t benefit them on anything.
Some changes can indeed be quite scary—like the job change I mentioned earlier. Even when the cost-benefit ratio is highly attractive, the pressure to deliver nothing less than an outstanding performance can feel overwhelming. And not everyone thrives under that kind of pressure. Others may fear moving to a completely different country with their entire family. But that isn’t necessarily about disliking change—it’s about anxiety. Anxiety is a natural response to uncertainty and the possibility of things going wrong.
If you’d like to learn more about anxiety, check out this article I wrote on my other site.
So how do we effectively make changes?
There’s a very cool framework called ADKAR (Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement), but I won’t talk about it right now. A change management framework is only useful when the proposed change makes sense. If you are proposing some really stupid change that doesn’t make sense to the people that are effectively executing it, you don’t need a change management framework to run it, you just need to be bossy and make it happen anyways, as you were already thinking of doing before going through ADKAR.
Changes must be meaningful and cost-effective. To achieve that, you need a clear understanding of the problem you’re addressing and the expected return once the change is implemented.
The first step is to be respectful of those responsible for approving and executing the changes. Ensure that the change was conceived and planned with input from the people (or at least some of them) who will be directly affected. This way, they understand why they’re making the change, and you can be confident that it’s actually feasible. I’ve seen departments spend thousands of dollars on new furniture only to realize that the intended changes weren’t technically possible.
Keep in mind that deploying a change is a major disruption to employees’ regular work. No matter how beneficial a change may seem, it will inevitably interfere with their daily routines and responsibilities. That’s why it’s crucial to ensure that the impact is worthwhile—any change should provide significantly more benefits than the inconvenience it causes. Additionally, make sure changes are sustainable or, at the very least, easy to revert if they don’t work out.
Do you want to know how to address problems effectively and propose the best changes with the proper buy-in? Stay tuned—or send me an email, and let’s discuss it!