Immunity to Change™

A recent study showed that when doctors tell heart patients they will die if they don't change their habits, only one in seven is able to follow through successfully. Clearly, desire and motivation aren't enough: even when it's literally a matter of life and death, the ability to change remains maddeningly elusive. Given that the status quo is so powerful, how can we create the changes we need in our selves and in our organizations?

The Immunity-to-Change™ approach developed by Harvard’s Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey shows how our individual habits and mindsets— along with the collective norms and beliefs in our organizations—combine to create an overwhelming immunity to change. Their approach amounts to nothing less than a radical recasting, conceptually and practically, of the work of improving performance.

Those frustrated or disappointed with their current change efforts who want guidance in knowing what to do to turn things around will find The Immunity-to-Change™ approach very practical. With "how to" advice, hands-on diagnostics and compelling case studies, The Immunity-to-Change™ approach delivers the tools you need to overcome the forces of inertia and transform your life and your work.

The field of leadership development has not attended sufficiently to development. Kegan and Lahey highlight that in addition to identifying leadership elements and skills we need to attend to the most powerful source of our ability: our capacity to overturn our limitations and blind spots and truly transform ourselves. True development is about transforming your operating system not just adding more files and programmes.

The Immunity-to-Change™ coaching approach has been applied in countries across the world. It has been implemented by a national railway in Europe, an international financial services company and senior partners in the world's leading international strategy consulting firm. 

Chellie in conjunction with Rodger Spiller & Associates offers the The Immunity-to-Change™ approach for individual executives, teams and organizations. It can be provided in a personalised 1:1 process, in small-group coaching pods, and in large-scale organization events. This approach helps accomplish long-sought-after behavioural goals by making visible unrecognized “parallel goals” (“counter commitments”) that are producing precisely the behaviours that undermine aspirations. There is a hidden, internal dynamic “protecting” you from the changes you most desire to make; this is what this approach calls the “immune system.” We offer several ways for you and your organization to start overturning your immune system today so that you can accomplish your most important change goals. 

Immunity to Change is a wonderfully original approach to a familiar problem: why many crucial change efforts fail. It shows how the core problems of resistance to change stem from the critical gaps between what is required and a leader’s own level of development.

-Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline