Do We Really Want Change When Asking For It?
Do you and your organization really want change or just dream about it?
“To want change, or not to?” That’s the real question.
Does your organization truly want change, or just the idea of it?
I’ve seen it time and time again: teams and managers boldly claim they want change - urgently, desperately. But when that change finally comes knocking, the response is often… silence. Stillness. Anxiety. Passiveness.
Because there’s a big difference between desiring change and acting on it.
The Status Quo Has Gravity
I’ve witnessed and personally experienced how new hires, brought in to shake things up, are quickly forced to adapt to the old ways. To the same broken status quo hiring managers themselves criticized during the interview process.
But then... why does it persist?
Because disrupting the status quo, especially while juggling day-to-day stressors, is hard. It demands courage, clarity, and a willingness to be uncomfortable. Most organizations aren’t really built for that.
“Didn’t You Say We Were Moving Away from Excel?”
You join full of ideas and energy, ready to build something better. In your first few weeks, you're proposing forward-looking solutions—and then suddenly your manager asks:
“Hey, could you please put this in the Excel sheet?”
Wait. Wasn’t the whole point to move away from Excel? Weren’t you supposed to lead change? You pause. You did your part. You shared ideas. But… now we’re here?
This is the dissonance so many face.
Why Are You the One Fixing Their Mess?
There’s this common narrative: “New people always want to change everything.”
But why wouldn’t they? Most likely, during the interviews, the company painted a picture of dysfunction. They shared frustrations with underperforming teams, bad processes, or poor metrics. And now you, the outsider, are expected to fix what insiders have tolerated for months or years?
That’s the first red flag.
The Hero with No Horse
You were hired to be the hero, the savior. But the moment you start acting like one, bringing change, proposing new ways, the organization’s immune system kicks in. You face resistance. Suddenly, even your manager disappears. They stop supporting you. They don’t communicate your mission to the rest of the team.
Now, you’re the outsider. The enemy.
The story you were told in the interview? That’s yours alone now.
No one else sees that reality.
Welcome to the System, You’re Now Part of It
So what happens? You begin doing things the “old way.”
You start using Excel again.
You sit in endless meetings.
Projects stall for months.
You spend more time defining what to do than doing it.
And inside, something in you knows this isn’t right. You saw how broken it was from the outside. You know it can be better. But acting on that truth comes with a price: friction, resistance, being disliked.
So what do you do?
You adapt. Or you leave.
You downgrade the “calling” into just a “job.”
The Real Red Flag
Here’s what surprises me most: if the status quo was so bad, why didn’t the hiring manager do something about it before?
Why didn’t they fire the toxic person they complained about?
Why didn’t they stop the pointless project?
Why did they wait for someone new to come in?
What you're seeing is more than resistance—it's a symptom of weak leadership: indecision, avoidance, lack of feedback, and a total absence of ownership.
This isn’t a one-off moment. It’s a preview of the next 6–12 months, maybe even years.
The Status Quo Trap
You, my friend, have fallen into the status quo trap. And you didn’t see it coming.
Interviews are like dating. Everyone’s selling the dream.
The candidate: “I’m your change agent.”
The company: “We’re a rocketship with problems we really want to fix.”
In the end, it becomes personal. If you accept the role, you don’t want to feel like you made a mistake. If they hired you, they don’t want to be challenged or exposed. Ego gets involved. Rejection becomes painful on both sides.
I remember the first time a candidate I really wanted turned down an offer.. it felt like heartbreak.
The same happens in reverse.
So, Do You Really Want Change?
Because if you do, it won’t come wrapped in comfort.
It will come with discomfort, hard conversations, loss of control, and disruption of familiar rhythms.
You have to earn your way out of the status quo. And that starts with a question:
Are you willing to pay the price of real change?
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