How Hard Should You Push to Make Change?

Why It Matters

Calibrated change management preserves performance and reduces turnover, directly impacting a firm’s ability to innovate and sustain competitive advantage.

Key Takeaways

• Change creates discomfort, temporarily reducing performance and productivity.
• Break large initiatives into incremental, manageable steps for success.
• Use the Risk Box to gauge risk levels from safe to impulsive.
• Engage allies early and treat resistance as valuable feedback.
• Avoid impulsive actions (Point Six) to prevent irreversible organizational damage.

Summary

The podcast episode explores how aggressively leaders should push for organizational change, highlighting the trade‑offs between ambition and disruption.

Stefanac explains that change inevitably makes people uncomfortable, often causing a temporary dip in performance, and that successful initiatives require realistic timelines rather than quick‑fix fixes. She advises breaking large goals into smaller, testable chunks and using the six‑point Risk Box to locate where a leader sits—from safe compliance to reckless impulsivity.

She cites the vague, long‑term diversity pledges after the Black Lives Matter surge, the fictional Jerry McGuire manifesto that got the protagonist fired, and the real‑world Levi’s senior executive Jennifer Sey, whose outspoken resistance to COVID policies led to her exit and a costly settlement. These examples illustrate the perils of leaping to Point Six without building support.

For managers, the takeaway is to calibrate risk, engage allies early, listen to resistance as diagnostic feedback, and progress methodically through the Risk Box. Doing so maximizes the chance of lasting change while protecting one’s credibility and career.

Original Description

Have you ever pushed so hard to make a change in your organization that you ended up damaging your own ability to make that very change? Chicago Booth’s Lisa Stefanac tells us how to think about effecting change. How hard should you push, and when can you know if you’ve gone too far?