Is it harder to make people mask than change their clocks twice a year?

29 May 2025

Change at scale is hard. Here’s a reckon: if a desired change is strongly associated with people’s identity, or if it is embodied in the real world, people are more likely to resist that change ¹.

I’ve no evidence to support this, but it feels true.

Ternary plot with three axes, Identity, Embodied and Abstract. Starting at Abstract and moving toward the Identity/Embodied line are plotted the labels Clocks, Ozone, Y2K, EVs, Currency, Obesity, Masking and Drive on right.

It’s easier to get a nation to change clocks twice a year or to get the world to fix the ozone layer (low identity, embodied but mostly abstract).

It’s harder to get the country to change currency, or deploy EVs (higher identity, slightly embodied), or fix Y2K (low identity, quite embodied).

And it’s harder still to reduce obesity nationally (high identity, highly embodied), or change the side of the road your country drives on, or make people wear masks once the government has told you that you can go back to normal.

To be clear, all of these things are incredibly hard to do, it’s just that some of them might face more resistance.

Zooming in to the level of the organisation, low trust, siloed teams, rigid career paths, unclear roles and responsibilities, competing incentives - all make the organisational culture look inward at its own workings (high identity, corporately embodied) ². People might think about change as if it’s about them and what they might lose, and they might resist it. The organisational immune system kicks in early, rejecting change before it’s started.

And change becomes easier if the organisation looks outward at a bigger mission, or if its teams are aligned, with safety and trust, or its policies and incentives point at ambitious shared outcomes rather than business as usual.

There’s no thought leadership punchline here. All change is hard. And much of it is essential.