Resistance to Change: How the Four A’s Help Leaders Respond

In my experience, resistance to change often begins when business leaders see that something familiar may no longer work.

They may understand the problem perfectly well. Results are declining, a competitor has moved ahead, or an opportunity requires additional resources. Even so, committing money and changing the way people work can be a difficult decision.

I discussed this with Victor Lee on his podcast, Things I Didn’t Learn at Harvard. His questions helped me describe something I had not previously framed quite this way: the emotional intensity changes as a business moves through the Four A’s of Change.

We also discussed how long that process takes. Recognizing the need for change is not the same as accepting it. Once a business makes that commitment, it still needs time to work out a response and put it into practice. Meanwhile, circumstances outside the company continue changing.

Why Resistance to Change Can Accompany Good News

We tend to associate resistance with a problem: something breaks, performance drops, or a competitor moves ahead. However, positive developments can create similar anxiety.

Consider a manufacturer whose business is growing. Supporting that growth might require machinery, employees, or additional space. Leadership wants the orders, but committing the resources to fulfill them is another decision. There is money at risk and more work to organize, even when the opportunity looks promising.

After my conversation with Victor, I began organizing the pressures around acceptance into three connected areas: financial commitment, emotional resistance, and the operational work that follows.

Those concerns deserve examination. Someone has to determine whether the business can afford the investment and who will handle the additional responsibilities. Fear of making the wrong decision can complicate both discussions.

Repeating the benefits of change may not help when the real concern is what accepting it will require. That is the conversation leadership needs to have before it can make a sensible commitment.

“Maybe We’re No Longer Going to Play the Google Game”

One client experience has stayed with me for years.

In 2013, during the period of Google’s Hummingbird and other search algorithm changes, a client’s digital presence declined. We had already done considerable work, and the executives were frustrated that maintaining their position would call for further investment.

During a meeting, the message was: “Maybe we’re no longer going to play the Google game.”

I held back. Becoming defensive or arguing with them at that point would not have helped. I needed to think through what was happening and how to address it.

Their frustration was understandable. They had invested in getting somewhere and now felt that progress had been taken away. Something they thought was working had changed, and they were being asked to put more money into it.

I also acknowledged a mistake of my own during the podcast: I may not have done enough to set expectations beforehand. Had we discussed the likelihood of continued change and the resources it might require, the situation might have been less of a shock.

Working Through Resistance to Change with Evidence

A few weeks later, we returned to the discussion. By then, the initial emotion had settled enough to examine the situation more closely.

We reviewed their digital performance and compared it with competitors. The competitors had experienced disruption too, but appeared to have responded and were doing better than my client.

That gave us something concrete to discuss. Whatever the executives thought about Google, they still had to consider their competitive position and the consequences of falling further behind.

I explained that catching up later could require a much larger investment. We also discussed finding a budget they were comfortable maintaining, rather than treating every new requirement as an unwelcome, isolated expense.

When Victor asked about the outcome, I told him: “They eventually came around.”

Giving the conversation some space helped. I had time to think through my approach, and the executives were more receptive to the evidence when we met again. We could finally discuss how to respond.

The Four A’s of Change: Moving Through the Phases

I developed the Four A’s through my experience as a business owner, my work with clients, and my exposure to technology adoption. Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm influenced that thinking, but the framework itself is mine.

Anticipate, Accept, Adapt, and Adopt describe distinct phases of work. Separating them helps me identify where a business is struggling and what needs attention.

Anticipate: Prepare the Resources

When I say anticipate change, I mean more than knowing something will eventually happen. From a business standpoint, it means preparing resources, particularly setting funds aside before an urgent need appears.

That need might come from outside the company or from its own growth. Expecting change does little good if there is no money available to deal with it. Setting those funds aside requires a conscious decision while there are still other uses for the money.

Victor observed that when you anticipate change, some of the emotional work has already occurred. I agreed. You have accepted the possibility that resources will be needed, even if you cannot predict the circumstances.

That preparation can reduce resistance to change when an actual decision has to be made.

Accept: Commit to Addressing the Need

Acceptance is where the business acknowledges that continuing as before may no longer be appropriate and commits to addressing the situation.

In my experience, this is often the hardest phase. Leaders may have to let go of familiar practices and reconsider previous investments without knowing exactly how the next step will turn out.

Recognizing a problem in a meeting is not the same as committing to address it. A business can agree that its circumstances have changed and then spend weeks postponing a response. The discussion has to move far enough for people to act on what they have acknowledged.

Adapt: Work Out the Response

Adaptation is the planning phase. Once the business accepts the need for change, it works out what must happen differently.

Strategies, policies, or processes may need revision. In marketing, we might be planning website changes, reconsidering the content approach, or changing how the company communicates with its market.

Someone has to work through those details with the people involved. They need to understand their responsibilities and the resources available to them. This is where acceptance becomes an operational plan that the business can carry out.

Adopt: Put the Plan into Operation

Adoption means implementing what the business has planned and establishing it within everyday operations.

The people responsible now have to carry out the work. A revised process needs to be used, and a marketing plan needs to move beyond agreement on the direction. Otherwise, the business has spent time planning a change that has yet to happen.

This is why I separate Adapt from Adopt. Working out how to respond is a substantial task in its own right, but implementation is another phase with its own demands.

Resistance to Change: The Emotional Curve Across the Four A’s

During the interview, I found myself describing a possible graph of the emotional intensity across these phases. I had not prepared it beforehand. Victor’s questions and our discussion brought the idea into focus.

Anticipation involves an initial emotional commitment, including deciding to reserve money for something that has not happened yet. Acceptance raises the intensity because the change is now real and requires a decision.

With adaptation and adoption, I see more of the effort going into planning and execution. In the curve I described, Adapt sits below Anticipate, and Adopt is lower still.

That is a conceptual picture based on my experience, rather than measured psychological data. I would not expect every organization to follow precisely the same pattern.

People can still find implementation uncomfortable or difficult. But once the commitment is made, they can concentrate on carrying out the response instead of continuing to debate whether to begin.

Less emotional resistance does not mean less work—or an immediate result.

Change Happens in Phases, and Each Phase Takes Time

Before discussing the emotional graph, Victor and I talked about the time needed for planning and implementation.

I described planning as something that might take a few weeks, a month, or longer, depending on the company and what needs to change. Implementation has its own duration. An internal operational adjustment might take days or a week; broader marketing work might take one, two, or three months.

Those were examples, not deadlines assigned to the Four A’s. The scope of the work matters.

A business can move past its initial resistance to change and still need substantial time to organize and carry out the response. We should allow for that work when setting expectations, rather than interpret every delay as reluctance to act.

The emotional curve describes how people experience the change. The timeline concerns how long the work takes. A team may be comfortable with its decision and fully committed to it while still having weeks of planning or implementation ahead.

Resistance to Change Has a Time Cost

I have continued developing another point since the podcast: the time between recognizing a need and accepting it can create consequences of its own.

A manufacturer that postpones needed capacity could miss production opportunities. A company that delays responding to market developments could lose ground while competitors move ahead. Making the investment later does not necessarily recover everything lost during the delay.

That does not make every pause a mistake. Reviewing options, checking assumptions, and determining affordability are legitimate responsibilities. The question is whether the business is using the time to reach a better decision or simply avoiding an uncomfortable one.

It helps to ask two questions together: What will an appropriate response cost? What might continued inaction cost?

Looking only at the immediate cash outlay leaves out what the expenditure could protect or make possible. Leaders also need to consider whether it supports future capability or growth, and what they give up by not proceeding. That still leaves room to reject a proposal. The decision should account for the consequences of both acting and waiting.

When the Next Change Arrives Before the Last Becomes Habit

Victor and I also discussed what happens when people have little time to settle into a new way of working before something else changes.

I had raised a similar question in a conversation with my son and some of his technology colleagues. We spend considerable time discussing what a new tool can do. I wanted to know whether we were giving enough thought to how long people need to absorb it and make it useful.

My concern is that the next change may arrive before the previous one has become routine. That adds pressure to every phase of the Four A’s, particularly for a business already struggling to make a decision.

It also affects how I think about the adoption discussion in Crossing the Chasm. Alongside who adopts and who hesitates, I want to consider how much time a business has to make the transition.

I am not assigning a universal number of days to forming a habit. The concern is whether people have enough time to become comfortable using something before another change requires their attention.

Acknowledge Resistance to Change Without Becoming Stubborn

Near the end of our conversation, I offered Victor a simple thought: “Let’s not be stubborn about that resistance.”

You do not have to enjoy every change. You do need to examine what is happening before allowing your first reaction to determine the business response.

For a leadership team, I would start with the change already causing the most discussion. Work out which phase you are in and what is holding up progress. The business might lack resources, need better information, or still be working through a decision nobody feels comfortable making.

It may also have accepted the need for change and be doing the necessary planning. That deserves a different conversation from one about unwillingness to act.

The Four A’s help make those discussions specific. Working through resistance to change becomes more manageable when we understand where we are stuck and why.

We can take the time to think it through. We cannot count on the rest of the market waiting for us.

More on the Four A’s and Business Change

• Business Adaptation Strategy: The 4 A’s of Change for Leaders Who Refuse to Fall Behind
• AI-Driven Content Strategy: How to Adapt When Algorithm Changes Disrupt Your Marketing
• Business Adaptability: How Companies Stay Relevant Through Change