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Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock Potential in Yourself and Your Organization
by
Unlock your potential and finally move forward.
A recent study showed that when doctors tell heart patients they will die if they don't change their habits, only one in seven will be able to follow through successfully. Desire and motivation aren't enough: even when it's literally a matter of life or death, the ability to change remains maddeningly elusive.
Given that the st ...more
A recent study showed that when doctors tell heart patients they will die if they don't change their habits, only one in seven will be able to follow through successfully. Desire and motivation aren't enough: even when it's literally a matter of life or death, the ability to change remains maddeningly elusive.
Given that the st ...more
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Hardcover, 340 pages
Published
January 13th 2009
by Harvard Business Review Press
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Start your review of Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock Potential in Yourself and Your Organization

I had high expectations for this book and didn't feel like it delivered. The first chapter is about how powerful this book has been with groups... so I kept reading to figure out the details. Reading the book felt like listening to a infomercial on how groups can change when their steps are implemented.
1. Understand that people are resistant to changing
2. Make sure that you identify the problem you are trying to solve carefully and that everyone involved in the solution is on-board.
3. Recogniz ...more
1. Understand that people are resistant to changing
2. Make sure that you identify the problem you are trying to solve carefully and that everyone involved in the solution is on-board.
3. Recogniz ...more

A reviewer on Amazon described this book well: Immunity to Change is a challenging analysis of how our well-developed methods of processing information and experience become barriers that hinder our attempts to achieve adaptive change. The first section of the book describes the theory and can be pretty tough going. The second applies the theory to case studies of organization change. The last is a primer on how to detect and overcome change immunity in your own organization.
What I liked about t ...more
What I liked about t ...more

Awful book, kind of typical for the genre, unbearably smug management self-help masquerading as science beamed down from planet boss (where no one hates their job). The kind of book that essentially reads like an advertisement for itself.
The core concepts are two-fold the first revolves around "why do people not change when it's obviously for the better", and the solution "because of some unresolved trauma that has created an immune response", has the veneer of insight, but literally all the evi ...more
The core concepts are two-fold the first revolves around "why do people not change when it's obviously for the better", and the solution "because of some unresolved trauma that has created an immune response", has the veneer of insight, but literally all the evi ...more

Finally a readable book by a developmental psychologist explaining stages of adult development. The author Robert Kegan at Harvard is probably the leading developmental psychologist in the country, but his first book Evolving Self was a tough read, just like Fowler's Stages of Faith. This book explains much more clearly how to identify stage changes and then gives many examples (mostly in work settings) of how people made changes in their lives. He explains how even when we really want to make
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1. I really like Kegan's developmental psychology model.
2. While the model is interesting conceptually, apparently the empirical evidence for it is more tenuous than Kegan admits.
3. Kegan then comes up with a method how to work through personal and professional changes (this book).
4. The immunity to change method is linked to his dev-psych model. This link is nice - but mostly an embellishment, rather than a functionally important piece.
5. The method itself is a super boring/dry 4 column sheet w ...more
2. While the model is interesting conceptually, apparently the empirical evidence for it is more tenuous than Kegan admits.
3. Kegan then comes up with a method how to work through personal and professional changes (this book).
4. The immunity to change method is linked to his dev-psych model. This link is nice - but mostly an embellishment, rather than a functionally important piece.
5. The method itself is a super boring/dry 4 column sheet w ...more

There were only 2 interesting and helpful concepts in the entire book. One was the idea of “mental complexity” which is the measure of one’s ability to inspect and manipulate their own perspective rather than getting caught up in it. The second idea is that most people’s hesitancy to change, terribly entitled “immunity”, (it appears as though the authors were unaware of the positive connotations of the word) is due to an underlying core belief that they may or may not be aware of. To help someo
...more

This book had some really interesting ideas. I liked the emphasis on addressing the gap between intention and behavior. But the title is terrible - it still confuses me. Resistance to Change would make much more sense. And like most books on academic subjects written by the researchers, the book goes on too long and begins to feel redundant. It was a good book, but I don't feel strongly about recommending it as a must read.
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How does one break out of the MATRIX? Mindset change for people and organizations is possible but it is usually taken as a technical challenge which is setting up for failure (adaptive challenges cannot be solved with technical approaches). The book intro was very intriguing and I was not that impressed after halfway through the book but it got better towards the end and the book does make some unorthodox statements on transformation of people and teams in order to cope with the growing complexi
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What is preventing you from being able to change? What is your "immunity to change"? I found this book to be extremely useful. The authors provide many examples of how people may want to change but are also holding themselves back - as though they have one foot on the accelerator but also, and unconsciously, have one foot on the brake - no wonder change is not happening! They also discuss the importance of selecting one big thing to focus on changing and stress the importance of selecting that c
...more

This book was recommended by the Annie E. Casey Leadership Develop Team, which is supporting our company to design a complex change initiative and to develop the mindsets to do it well. Immunity to Change provides a powerful developmental framework for individuals and teams to get better at their most important thing. A few key quotes:
- "... we are calling upon workers to understand themselves and their world at a qualitatively higher level of mental complexity." (25)
- "Anxiety, we have graduall ...more
- "... we are calling upon workers to understand themselves and their world at a qualitatively higher level of mental complexity." (25)
- "Anxiety, we have graduall ...more

This book is easier to read than Kegan's prior work. I think the additional author really kept it from getting too disorganized and wordy.
The book builds on the themes in In Over Our Heads, and extends them to talk about how to grow as a person. The overall thesis is that people all interpret the world around them at different levels of complexity, and the levels of complexity are distinct and different from each other. The higher your own level of complexity can be, the more productive and happ ...more
The book builds on the themes in In Over Our Heads, and extends them to talk about how to grow as a person. The overall thesis is that people all interpret the world around them at different levels of complexity, and the levels of complexity are distinct and different from each other. The higher your own level of complexity can be, the more productive and happ ...more

Kegan and Laslow present a method for transformation that addresses the human side. Many change initiatives on a personal or collective level fail because the change is treated technically. We just have to learn new skills and then change will follow. In my experience, many times people know what their situation is, they know what they should be doing and they have good intentions, but they fall back to old patterns nevertheless and little change is achieved. It feels like one foot is on the gas
...more

If you love books about personal development and love books about organizational change, this book will probably be in your sweet spot. The premise is this: often the areas of our life that we want to change are inadvertently sabotaged by our own emotional, unconscious assumptions about ourselves and the world. Using a four-step process, the authors help a person articulate their change goal, understand what they ware doing to fight against that goal, what fears are driving them toward those act
...more

I really appreciated Kegan's case study framework in approaching the problem of leadership. His dichotomy of identifying blocking issues into technical (ones that require a persistence of execution) and adaptive problems (ones that require a systems thinking approach to identify conflicting values) was helpful both in the office, and in the home. Highly recommended for those interested in applied emotional intelligence.
...more

I read this as part of a leadership institute I attended and believe that this book and core concepts should be integrated in all teacher preparation, instructional coaching professional development, and educational leadership programs. It is an enlightening philosophy of the structures we protect in our blind efforts to resist change.

Some good information, some good insights, but my experiences in executive coaching tell me that for most readers, it'd be a Grand Canyon-sized leap from grasping the model to using it well for change...
...more

Excellent review of why we don't do what we want to do, and do do what we don't want to do. Sounds like do do to me! :)
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Good book with some great insights as to why people don't change and how it can be facilitated.
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The authors start off defining this phrase "immunity to change" essentially as a condition or set of conditions that keep us from changing due to our inherent disposition to preserve our current paradigms.
The book goes through in great detail a process that the authors have used in working with individuals and their organizations. While the translation of those efforts does not make for the most flowed narrative, there are elements within I found helpful. For instance:
• The difference between le ...more
The book goes through in great detail a process that the authors have used in working with individuals and their organizations. While the translation of those efforts does not make for the most flowed narrative, there are elements within I found helpful. For instance:
• The difference between le ...more

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Okay, this is one of those books from business consultancy firms that has a bunch of training charts and how to go about them. I’m going to attempt to try them, because the idea behind them seems to make sense, even though as a book to just pick up and read, it’s severely lacking.
The basic thesis is that people fail to change because there are certain innate immunities to that particular change that we need to address first. To clarify more, even though there are certain things we want to change ...more
The basic thesis is that people fail to change because there are certain innate immunities to that particular change that we need to address first. To clarify more, even though there are certain things we want to change ...more

Given the nature of my “professional” work, I thought this might be a valuable read. Big mistake. OK, rather, Small mistake, since I DNF’d around halfway through. “Twaddle” is a word that comes to mind.
Despite that the authors claim this book to be of value for change agents at any level, in reality, the focus is entirely on senior executive level dynamics in large-corporation environments. They have a way of spinning long chapters about how great their methods and results are, without giving y ...more
Despite that the authors claim this book to be of value for change agents at any level, in reality, the focus is entirely on senior executive level dynamics in large-corporation environments. They have a way of spinning long chapters about how great their methods and results are, without giving y ...more

I "love" it how consultants always have the safety net. Usually when someone is suggesting a method they have this "if it didn't work for you, you didn't try hard enough" rule that they keep repeating. I found similar statements in this book as well. Otherwise, authors claim for this to be a miracle method to overcome your immunity to change. With that being said, I am sure that this book could be a marvelous inspiration for an individual in a huge crisis. And I'd like to stress here - the crisi
...more

Book focus is about overcoming change barriers and has exercises you can undertake to help understand the proposed method. The main suggestion is to analyse each change idea by using a table with the following four columns:
1. Commitment / Goal
2. Doing / Not doing instead
3. Hidden competing commitments / interests
4. Big assumptions
One of the first, most important things to do is to establish the correct thing to focus on and try to change, this needs to be a true high priority that requires chang ...more
1. Commitment / Goal
2. Doing / Not doing instead
3. Hidden competing commitments / interests
4. Big assumptions
One of the first, most important things to do is to establish the correct thing to focus on and try to change, this needs to be a true high priority that requires chang ...more

Bit of a slog. Another corporate tool for leaders to diagnose and overcome the things holding them and their teams back. Some interesting approaches and theories about ways of thinking which I could pluck from for coaching, and some models to encourage people to interrogate their immunities to doing things differently. Stresses how behavioural change can only come through mindset change, otherwise you're attacking a problem in a technical way, not an adaptive way. I'm explaining it badly. But do
...more

Having just read In Over Our Heads, which was written by one of the two authors for this book, I was expecting another too long and overly theoretical tome. Instead, this one resonated as valuable, practical and worthy of deeper study. I just bought a copy of my own to be able to have time to use the exercises and return to them as needed. Immunity to Change is all about finding the hidden obstacles that keep us from making the changes we know we should make. If course to do that, we also have o
...more
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“We uncovered a phenomenon we call “the immunity to change,” a heretofore hidden dynamic that actively (and brilliantly) prevents us from changing because of its devotion to preserving our existing way of making meaning.”
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“If you have wanted to lose ten pounds for ten years and a diet finally helps you do it, you might well assume you have accomplished your goal. But your goal actually isn’t to lose ten pounds. Many people (even you?) have lost ten pounds many times! The goal is to lose ten pounds and keep the weight off. Dieting doesn’t lead to weight loss that endures. For this we must join a change in behavior with a change in the way we think and feel—and in order to change the way we think and feel, we need to change our mindsets. When we are working on truly adaptive goals—ones that require us to develop our mindsets—we must continually convert what we learn from behavioral changes into changes in our mindsets.”
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