Organizational Change:after 40 years Still ignoring the obvious

Why Organizational Change Management still isn’t taken seriously—And who’s really resisting it.

In a piece about why humans cling to dumb beliefs, Mark Manson shares a story that deserves a wider audience. So here goes:

In 1846, Dr. William Morton discovered a gas that could knock people out cold during surgery. No pain. No screaming. Just magic. And best of all: no extra efforts required. He demonstrated it publicly, and within eight months, anesthetics were used across western medicine.

Boom. Instant adoption. Because it was painless for everyone involved, not just the patient.

About twenty years later, Dr. Joseph Lister (among other “mad” pioneers) made a different kind of breakthrough. He figured out that a ton of post-surgery deaths were caused by infection. So he proposed something radical:

What if doctors washed their hands and cleaned their tools?

He brought proof. Research. Case studies. Science. The response? Decades of resistance from top doctors.

Why? Because Lister’s proposal was annoying.

It created more work. There was no clear benefit to the doctors themselves. They didn’t feel rewarded. And the whole idea of invisible little creatures causing harm went against everything they were trained for. So they shrugged and carried on with dirty scalpels. It took around 6 decades for men of science to be convinced by science.

Fast forward to today. New setting - same story.

Corporate world. Present day. Organizational Change Management (OCM) is the proposed antiseptic practice to keep the rot away from Organizations.

We’ve seen what happens without it: around 70% of change initiatives flop, and the road there is littered with frustration, disengagement, and burnout.

We know organizational change requires individual change. But we put the main focus on convincing individuals to change their behavior, instead of considering them as actual human beings.

Why?

Because for leaders real change management is inconvenient. 

Leaders aren’t resisting change management. 

They’re resisting discomfort. 

Because actual change management demands their time. Presence. Vulnerability. Transparency. It requires paying actual, mindful attention to humans. There are no hierarchies and spreadsheets to hide behind. No quick wins. Just Humans. And they are messy. So is managing them. 

But leaders don’t lean into discomfort. Instead of doing the work, they outsource it to change managers and expect them to throw glitter on top of a stinking pile of nonsense and hope for the best.  And when it all backfires, they say: “Yeah… change management was really bad on this one.”

OCM has existed in some form since the 1940s, but it didn’t enter the corporate bloodstream until the late 80s and 90s. And even then, it was mostly misunderstood. So yes—it’s been at least four decades of pretending change can happen in an emotional vacuum.

Just like Lister’s peers, we’re shrugging at the science, ignoring the mess and pretending we know better. OCM has been around for decades—and we still treat it like a luxury. I just hope it doesn’t take another forty years before we look back and say:

“What the hell were we thinking?”