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Change Usually Fails. Ask These 3 Questions To Improve Your Odds

6 min readSep 6, 2025

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People who are passionate about change usually start with answers. They have a solution to a problem they are enthusiastic about and are excited to implement it. Questions usually revolve around communication. They want to make people aware of their idea and give them the knowledge and understanding to make good use of it.

That’s why change management consultants tell us to to start by building awareness, desire and knowledge before moving on to training to provide people with the ability to implement change. They assume that if people just understand the idea, they will embrace it. That’s almost never true and it usually doesn’t end well.

The truth is that a big awareness campaign is likely to trigger those who hate the idea to immediately start working to undermine what you’re trying to achieve in order to kill it before it even starts. To bring genuine transformation about you need to see the world as it really is and ask yourself hard questions. Here are three that you’ll want to start with:

1. Where Will Resistance Come From?

Probably the greatest misconception about change is that it’s about persuasion. This often manifests itself in what’s known as the information deficit model. Practitioners assume that if others had the same…

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Greg Satell
Greg Satell

Written by Greg Satell

Bestselling Author, Keynote Speaker, Wharton Lecturer, HBR Contributor | Hire me: www.GregSatell.com | Support my work: https://buymeacoffee.com/gregsatell