When Change Stalls - Ask What We Failed To Provide

Change is rarely resisted simply because people do not want to change.

More often, something is missing.

The Lippitt–Knoster model offers a useful way to think about this. Successful change requires five things to come together: vision, skills, incentives, resources, and an action plan. Remove any one of them, and the organization begins to behave differently.

Without vision, people become confused. Without skills, they become anxious. Without incentives, resistance grows. Without resources, frustration sets in. Without an action plan, there is activity but little real progress.

This is an important distinction for leadership.

When change stalls, the natural response is often to push harder. We repeat the message. We increase the number of meetings. We tighten timelines. We ask people to show greater urgency.

But effort cannot compensate for a missing condition.

If people do not understand where the organization is going, more pressure only increases confusion. If they understand the goal but do not know how to execute, urgency becomes anxiety. If they are capable but see no reason to change, resistance is predictable. If they are committed but do not have the resources, frustration is inevitable.

This changes the leadership question.

Instead of asking, “Why are people resisting?”, perhaps we should first ask, “What have we failed to provide?”

That is a much harder question because it shifts the focus from the people being asked to change to the leaders asking for the change.

Resistance, confusion, anxiety, and frustration are not always problems to be eliminated. Sometimes they are signals. They tell us where the change architecture is incomplete.

Good leadership is therefore not simply about creating urgency. It is about creating the conditions in which people can move.

A clear destination. The capability to get there. A reason to make the journey. The resources required. And a practical path forward.

When those pieces come together, change stops feeling like something being imposed on an organization.

It becomes something the organization knows how to execute.