Immunity to Change: Summary, and What the Research Says About Why People Don't Change

What the book argues

Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization is by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey. Harvard Business Press published it on February 15, 2009 (Harvard Business Review Press, n.d.; Open Library, n.d.).

The publisher's description makes the argument plainly. Desire and motivation are not enough to change. Individual beliefs, together with the collective mindsets in organizations, create a natural but powerful immunity to change. The book opens with a study of heart patients told to change their habits, of whom the publisher says only one in seven follows through, and it is filled with hands-on diagnostics and case studies (Harvard Business Review Press, n.d.). The Harvard Graduate School of Education describes the method as based on 30 years of adult developmental research, and says the authors found that change often fails because people focus only on their behavior (Harvard Graduate School of Education, n.d.). The underlying idea appeared earlier in their Harvard Business Review article on the competing commitment, a hidden commitment that works against a change a person says they want (Kegan & Lahey, 2001).

In my words: when someone keeps not doing what they promised, look for what the old behavior is protecting before you push harder.

Who it is for

Managers and coaches working with people who agree with a change and still do not make it, including themselves. It is a demanding book, closer to a workbook for reflection than a quick guide. getAbstract calls it a useful framework for thinking about personal and organizational change (getAbstract, n.d.).

What the research says

I found no controlled test of the immunity-to-change method in the evidence I use. The research does speak to its two big claims: that resistance often has reasons, and that habit pulls on behavior apart from what people intend.

Resistance tracks trust and flexibility, not only the change. Deng, Alias, Md Rami and Ismail (2023) reviewed 20 mostly cross-sectional studies of resistance to organizational change. Only trust in management and cognitive flexibility were linked to all three kinds of resistance they examined, in behavior, thinking and feeling. Leadership, relationships with the leader, participation, communication and fairness were linked to some kinds. It is a small review of correlational studies, so it shows associations, but it supports the book's view that resistance is more than stubbornness.

Habit goes with what professionals do. Potthoff and colleagues (2019) pooled nine studies of health care professionals. According to their abstract, habit had a medium-sized association with professionals' behavior, whether measured objectively or by self-report (r = .35). That fits the book's point that knowing what to do, and wanting to, does not settle the matter.

How a change is led goes with how people respond. Peng and colleagues (2021) pooled 30 studies. According to their abstract, transformational leadership went with less resistance and cynicism about change and more readiness, with some links weaker in studies that followed people over time.

Where the evidence is thin

The method is the authors' own, and its supporting evidence, as described by their university, is their own research program. The independent studies I use support the general picture but test something else: what goes with resistance, and how strong habit is. They do not show that uncovering a competing commitment helps someone change. The heart-patient figure the publisher cites is a claim about another study, which I have not checked.

How it maps to the Unfrozen Loop

This mapping is my judgment. Surfacing a hidden commitment is Surface both ways applied to oneself: the Unfrozen Loop asks for concerns to travel up, and this book asks people to bring their own unspoken ones into view. The collective mindsets the publisher describes belong to Make sense together, top included, where a team works out what a change means for its own work. See also resistance to change and the Atlas answer on why middle managers resist change.

What I take from it

The book's most useful move is changing the question from why someone will not change to what the old way is doing for them. If a change of yours is stuck, ask the people closest to it, one at a time, what they would worry about losing if it worked. The answers are often the real obstacle. For the habit side of the same problem, see Switch, and for more books, the change management reading list.