That's me from 23 years ago. First passport photo. I present this as evidence of the innate human ability to learn and evolve. (Even those of you who hung out with "that guy" and are still reading this!)
Six years ago, most employees said they'd back a workplace change if asked. Today, most won't: support for enterprise change fell from 74 per cent to 43 per cent between 2016 and 2022.
The usual explanations? People got cynical. "Kids these days". Burnout. The pandemic.
Here's my problem with all of those: human nature doesn't move 31 points in six years. We are built to adapt — it's arguably our defining trait as a species.
So what actually broke?
The playbooks we're running. The change model most organisations still run was designed for stable hierarchies, predictable timelines and compliant workforces…a world that no longer exists. People didn't stop being capable of change. They stopped trusting a model that was clearly failing them.
And yet the question leaders keep asking is: how do we make them more willing?
Wrong question. The better one: what does human change capability actually look like — once you stop viewing it through a broken model?
The answer is far more encouraging than that statistic suggests.
This article is the paraphrased opening argument of my upcoming book, Pragmatic Change — a practitioner's guide to leading change built on what humans actually are, rather than what the 2005 playbook assumed they were. Register your interest here to be notified when it's released.
The capacity arrives with the demand.
I was 34 years old (no longer with that haircut), standing in a hospital room holding my less-than-one-hour-old son, experiencing emotions I cannot properly describe.
I did not feel ready. I knew this with complete clarity. I had read the books, attended the classes, and assembled the cot with the focused intensity of someone who believes flat-pack furniture done correctly will somehow make him Father of the Year.
None of it produced the readiness I was expecting.
What happened in the weeks that followed surprised me more than the love did — and the love arrived with a force that genuinely amazed me. What surprised me was my own competence. Within days I knew his different cries. Within weeks I had entirely reorganised my priorities. Within months I had become someone I genuinely had not been before.
No readiness assessment. No training program. No governance committee approving the transition. (Okay…maybe a little low-key nagging.)
The capacity arrived with the demand.
I don't tell this story because it's unusual. I tell it because it's one of the most common yet profound experiences humans have — and its very relatability is the point.
Every living person has navigated a genuinely impressive change, often in who they are, not just what they do.
I've written before about what parenthood teaches you about change management — but the deeper lesson runs the other way. It's what parenthood proves about human change capability itself.
You have already navigated more genuine change — in identity, in relationships, in beliefs, in circumstances, in you — than any program you will ever be asked to support or lead.
The science agrees, physically.
Eleanor Maguire and her colleagues at University College London spent years studying the brains of London cab drivers who had memorised 'The Knowledge' — complete recall of London's 25,000 streets and the uncountable routes between them.
Her findings were physical. The hippocampus, the brain region associated with spatial navigation and memory formation, was measurably larger in experienced cab drivers than in a control group. The longer someone had been driving, the more pronounced the difference. The brain had literally grown into a new structure in response to sustained demand.
Change reshapes the brain. Not as a figure of speech — as a measurable fact.
The term is neuroplasticity, and it's one of the most robust findings in modern neuroscience. Neural pathways rewire in response to new demands throughout life, not just in childhood. There's a trade-off: rewiring is metabolically expensive, it requires the right conditions, and it isn't comfortable in its early stages. Think of the overwhelm that comes with a new role. But this study (and many others) prove the capacity and the mechanisms are there.
Carol Dweck's decades of research added the psychological layer. A 'fixed mindset' treats capability as stable and inherited — you have it or you don't. A 'growth mindset' treats it as expandable and earned. The neuroscience confirms the second one is how the brain actually works, so that is what will take place if we create psychologically safe and rewarding environments.
That makes a counter uncomfortable implication for my profession: most change management was built as a fixed-mindset discipline. Readiness assessed as a static state. Resistance treated as a personality trait. Some leaders are 'good at change' and others not.
When the program failed, the recovery plan was more of the same...often in 'billable increments'.
The science was always pointing somewhere else.
Human capability still is (and always was) the answer
Adapting to change is still an innate capability. In this day and age we are crossing new frontiers; I built an AI change advisor for those leading complex change (and those just curious about leadership). Unprecedented times for unprecedented change...but we're still human.
If your people are projecting overwhelm, it's worth assessing if you have been running them through a model that treats their adaptability as a fixed quantity to be managed, rather than a living capability to be conditioned.
People are resistant to change that doesn't make sense — delivered through a model that stopped making sense years ago.
You've been doing this your whole life. So has everyone in your organisation. The question for anyone leading change in 2026 is whether your program is adequately designed for the capability that's already in the room.
This is the premise Pragmatic Change starts from.
Pragmatic change is my name for a different starting position, built across twenty years of practice: the capability is already in the room. The leader's job is creating the conditions that let an innate human capacity do its work.
In practice that looks like starting with what you've got; I apply that rule to knowledge itself.
I graduated Beta Gamma Sigma (the international honour society for business schools) from one of the best business schools in the country, and I've worked with top-50 ASX organisations. I've also worked for NFPs, volunteer footy clubs and regional communities.
Whether it's academic, professional standard or 'street knowledge' makes no difference to me. If it works in that setting, it should be adapted, applied and utilised.
There's a reflective practice in this for every leader: do you know why you developed the tools and principles you reach for?
This article is the paraphrased opening argument of my upcoming book, Pragmatic Change — a practitioner's guide to leading change built on what humans actually are, rather than what the 2005 playbook assumed they were. Register your interest here to be notified when it's released.
The change-willingness data (74% in 2016 to 43% in 2022) comes from Gartner research, published in "Employees Are Losing Patience with Change Initiatives," Harvard Business Review, May 2023.
Eleanor Maguire's taxi driver research was published with colleagues at UCL from 2000; the longitudinal confirmation is Woollett, Spiers & Maguire (2009). Carol Dweck's research is synthesised in Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (2006).