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Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock Potential in Yourself and Your Organization

Robert Kegan,

Lisa Laskow Lahey

4.06 · Rating details · 1,764 ratings · 156 reviews

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

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Hardcover, 340 pages

Published January 13th 2009 by Harvard Business Review Press

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Jul 21, 2014 Melanie rated it it was ok

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

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May 26, 2012 Margaret rated it really liked it

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

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Oct 09, 2017 Seanán Mac rated it did not like it

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 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 evidence presented is anecdotal, a simple experiment with controls measuring stress hormones in the blood would go some way to prove or disprove the claims made, there is no indication in the thirty or so years the authors boast of researching anything like this was even considered, instead we get before and after surveys based on subjective criteria like ‘innovation’ (a meaningless cliché term that a MBA will teach you means “Maguyvering’, but a dictionary will tell you means ‘restoration’), oh wow you mixed people up and got them to talk to each other and now they rate ‘communication’ higher? Sensational! But pray now do we know the techniques themselves worked, versus the notion of simply getting people to confront obvious problems collectively in a non-judgemental environment? How do we know the survey answers aren’t just the responders being polite to the expensive people from Harvard the board got in post-merger? How do we know it isn’t a placebo effect, where the more elaborate syringe is more affective than the humble sugar pill, thus it’s more a matter of having important people come in to deal with the important problem and now that important people have dealt with the important problem the important problem has been dealt with, than any specific techniques or breakthroughs? This is basic stuff I would expect anyone who’d stayed awake through more than 10% of psych 101 to account for when using surveys as evidence, yet at no point are they accounted or controlled for, nor is there any indication this was ever done, which gives the entire thesis and enterprise the reek of snake oil. The follow-up interviews conducted three months later are at least conducted by third parties, but don’t exactly allay these concerns.

Even the anecdotal evidence is weak, for example in the story of 'Cathy', a woman who works herself off her feet to make herself indispensable, to the point of having a nervous breakdown, post her 'breakthrough' (she realises that her trauma was based on failing at medical school, though this is further re-framed as the thing that made her who she is now and therefore positive), she is still talking in terms of giving "110%" but really expecting "150%", the only change is now co-workers will tell her when she is being a bit too much and she will take a time out or realise that not everything is in her control and to act accordingly. Which of course helps I'm sure, but these people are Harvard professors, surely there's a bit more meat on the bone than basic common sense in dealing with someone who has hospitalised themselves due to overwork? None of the underlying beliefs have changed, it's akin to telling a drunk driver to put on a safety belt and verges on medical malpractice. And heaven forbid a company should take responsibility for working a clearly mentally unstable employee to the point of exhaustion and beyond, by permanently reducing her workload, or insist she seek out actual help rather than the potentially damaging attention of a bunch of productivity quacks from Harvard.

The second aspect, the various levels of self-development is essentially a post hoc reification of the corporate career path, again I see very little to back this up, a basic knowledge of brain function will tell you the areas which deal with the capacity for self-control are the last to develop and the first to decline with age, at no point is this accounted for, it's progress all the way up, even if in their examples people seem to be never neatly fit into one box, but instead are a hybrid of different states.

As is also typical for the genre all these examples are people in well-paid, high-status positions (from that narrow band of people, the top 10% of protected salaried income earners who’s income has increased in the past 40 years at the expense and misery of everyone else who've gotten declining wages, longer hours, more debt all the while delivering increasing productivity, the fruits of which have been entirely captured by the top earning bracket, go look at a wage/productivity chart if you don't believe me), as in literally the class of people who in all recorded history are probably least in need of help (yet still insist they on it), in many respects what these people need to change based on societies values is very little, if anything, if the only thing you need to change is something relatively trivial such as David’s need to "become a better delegator and to better focus on a few critical things,” this is easily addressed with the help of outside parties. Don’t forget every test case here is literally wealthy enough to hire Harvard professors to help them with their problem, if you are in the income bracket that has to buy the book rather than hire the consultant, it’s a waste of your time and money, if you are in the income bracket that can afford to hire a dedicated professional consultant or coach why waste your time spending 6 to 8 hours reading a book when you can get the real experience tailored for you? Either way this book strikes me as a waste of money and time.

It is frankly bizarre to read a book about changing behaviour by people from a quasi-scientific background, who've researched this for years that doesn't account for biology, environment or any other contextual factor other than the symptomatic manifestations that affects the organisations productivity.

I'd almost give them two stars, because the immunity map may have some small merit (I can see how old belief system may have had a use in the past as a kind of ego-preservation matrix, but it is very utilitarian in outlook and assumes you know what you 'really' want (which coincidentally is also what the higher ups want from you) and that this is both desirable and achievable, but of course once you know what you 'really' want things like the map become somewhat redundant), but I can't because the writing is so turgidly awful, so obnoxiously self-satisfied and unself-critical (its tone reminds me of Hilary Clinton’s post 2016 pose), the experience of reading is like being stuck in a lift for three hours with a self-important bore who won't shut up about themselves and their exaggerated achievements, so that by the third hour you've long-since stopped listening and are just fantasising about the cable snapping and a quick and merciful death.

Now I’ve slated the book it’s only fair I offer alternatives. If it's change you're looking for start with fundamentals, look at your environment and take on things like meditation, exercise and better diet, if you want motivation you could do worse than read Dan Pink's 'Drive', which covers the actual science and is informative, illustrative, shorter and vastly better written than this. Also consider researching executive function skills (avoid anything that positively refers to or written by Roy Baumeister, he’s been debunked, his work on will power as glucose was not replicated by others, but he’s only popular because he’s right-wing and authoritarian and re-affirms those values, albeit sneakily), developing the capacity to self-control and better manage yourself is the fundamental muscle you need to develop, after all if you don’t have a firm grip of the wheel how can you be expected to properly steer (again problem with these kinds of books is that they are written by management for management and assume you have access to resources such as a personal secretary, people reporting to you who’s livelihood depends on your good graces, and not insignificant disposable income, all things that make implementing the kind of ‘change’ such books advocate a far, far easier endeavour). I’m personally not a fan (if you want re-heated watered down stoicism, then go read the stoics, Seneca’s ‘letters to a young stoic’ is a good starting place, also Marco Aurellius’ ‘Meditations’, but bear in mind this is the ideology and mindset of an empire in terminal decline), but many people report CBT useful, there’s books out there on how to do it to yourself. Try and read as much in general, books not web, mix hard factual/philosophical with softer fiction, limit time online and delete your social media accounts (especially if you have a robust offline social world, if not consider how closing down the social media outlet may force you to build one), they waste time and cause depression. Vary your diet and I don’t just mean food, new ideas, people, places, experiences etc. Listen to the Ursula Le Guin’s translation of the Tao on youtube more than once. If you can get away from it all, it need not be anywhere fancy, just far away, take a time out and let the noise dampen down, go for walks, chop wood that kind of malarkey. Do it incrementally banish terms like “I need to”, you “need” oxygen, food and a reasonably hospitable environment, that fosters protection, socialising and reproduction (not just sexual), the rest is noise, take one-step at a time, and small steps at that, focus on fundamentals first, don’t overload yourself and don’t get cocky, being patient when excited is as important as being active when you feel lazy, with bipolar depression the depression and the mania are equally symptomatic. Lastly (if you’ve no history of psychosis) you might consider the ritualised ingestion of consciousness altering substances.

All this assumes the reader isn't uneducated, working class, destitute, mentally ill, holding down more than one job with children, or any other pesky real life phenomena that may impair the capacity to 'self-actualise', you know the kind of stuff written about in books like 'Nickel and dimed' which might as well be Swahili in brail for all the solipsistic denizens of planet boss deign to know of it. Of course none of these management type books ever account for anything like that, because the only true solution is either mass unionisation (to better secure bargaining position) or revolution.
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Sep 06, 2009 Ronda rated it it was amazing

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 ...more

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Sep 02, 2017 Suhrob rated it it was ok

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

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Jan 24, 2019 Matt Smart rated it it was ok

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

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Nov 04, 2019 Brennan rated it liked it

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. ...more

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Feb 28, 2019 Tõnu Vahtra rated it it was amazing

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 ...more

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Jan 17, 2014 Linda Sands rated it really liked it

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

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Jun 07, 2012 Michelle Kusel rated it it was amazing

The book is a little tough to read cover to cover, but the ideas behind the concept are SOLID and have totally worked for me!

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Feb 18, 2017 Sara Goldenberg rated it did not like it

KILL ME NOW.

So boring, so unhelpful.

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Sep 20, 2019 Mike rated it it was ok

One of the things I’m really trying to change is sticking to books that suck. This is most certainly one such book. What a self-congratulatory, pompous, ridiculously repetitive waste of time.

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Mar 09, 2022 Larkin Tackett rated it it was amazing

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 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 gradually come to appreciate, is the most important -- and least understood -- private emotion in public life." (48)
- "... we cannot succeed with adaptive challenges without recognizing that we are putting at risk what has been a very well functioning way of taking care of ourselves." (50)
- "... one needs to develop an even more complex way of knowing that permits one to look at, rather than choicelessly through, one's own framework." (53)
- "Creating a picture of our immunity to change surfaces optimal conflict." (54)
- "Our clients are our teachers." (61)
- "One of the famous sayings in child welfare is, 'You can't do this work unless you believe that families can change.'" (77)
- "... the hidden role of emotion in meeting the challenge of change, the need for us to find a way to bring what we have tended to think of as private experience into to the public realm of work... the idea that emotion that isn't dealt with comes back in a dysfunctional form in some way, will show up in dysfunctional form." (79)
- "... commitment to the journey of personal learning for public results." (81)
- "The worries people produce bring us to the doorway of their hidden commitments." (91)
- "... if we don't change, we are putting someone we love or something we care about at risk." (211)
- "... behavior is symptomatic of a system, and any lasting change will require the system to change." (222)
- "... reflection without action is ultimately as unproductive as action without reflection." (222)
- "I am more self-aware and more self-regulating." (275)

Features of a developmental stance:
1. It recognizes that there is "life after adolescence"; that adulthood, too, must be a time for ongoing growth and development.
2. It honors the distinction between technical and adaptive agendas.
3. It recognizes and cultivates the individual's intrinsic motivation to grow.
4. It assumes that a change in mindset takes time and is not evenly paced.
5. It recognizes that mindsets shape thinking and feeling, so changing mindsets needs to involve the head and the heart.
6. It recognizes that neither change in mindset nor change in behavior alone leads to transformation, but that each must be employed to bring about the other.
7. It provides safety for people to take the kids of risks inherent in changing their minds. ...more

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Feb 28, 2017 Morgan rated it really liked it

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

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Mar 04, 2020 Jens Rinnelt rated it really liked it

Shelves: business, human, coaching, leadership, psychology, collaboration

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 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 and one is on the break leading to going in circles.

In Immunity to change the authors explain that this is due to adaptive challenges. We have to adopt a new mindset, a new set of beliefs and assumptions in order to overcome our psychological need for self-preservation. Our immunity to change stems from our protection of our self-identity, who we believe to be in the world. In other words, our ego does not like to feel pain. Taking a constructive developmentalist perspectives the authors argue that we construct our meaning of the world through our beliefs. Therefore, if we change our beliefs through experiential knowledge (intentional action and reflection leading to insights) we can change our perception and behavior.

Immunity to change is a groundbreaking book that brings spiritual, philosophical and emotional aspects to a clear and straight-forward business jargon. It makes us aware that we are more than a homo economicus, not just a rational but also emotional being and that our immune system is a self-protection system that organizes our beliefs so it serves to make painful experiences of the past unconscious. This results in blind spots in our thinking / feeling and to a resistance of change. Validating that resistance helps us to eventually overcome it by creating more complex frames of how we make meaning of the world, that integrates our old beliefs while it also leads to creating a new set of beliefs. This evolution of the mind allows the existence of multiple contradictionary beliefs through a more complex worldview (Weltanschauung).

Only four stars though, because the second part of the book are long chapters describing the cases which feels like unwanted advertisement. On the other hand having documented efficient change on a personal and organizational level only strenthens the newly proposed theory for transformation. For me it would have been sufficient though to read the introduction and the last part where the methodology is explained for own application. ...more

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Apr 29, 2013 Garland Vance rated it really liked it

Shelves: leadership-individual, leadership-practice, 2013, d-min-reading

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

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Jan 12, 2016 Jason rated it really liked it

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

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Aug 12, 2012 Laura rated it it was amazing

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.

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Jun 27, 2017 Jane rated it liked it

Shelves: business

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

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Apr 15, 2009 Bob Tschannen-moran rated it really liked it

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! :) ...more

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Jun 22, 2019 Garrett Dukette rated it liked it

Meh. Very repetitive.

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Aug 20, 2011 Adam rated it really liked it

Good book with some great insights as to why people don't change and how it can be facilitated. ...more

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Dec 10, 2019 Michelle rated it really liked it

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 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 learning and training versus true development. Rather than bringing new skills to a given existing perspective, instead focus should be on changing the actual reference points(s): “… what passes for ‘leadership development’ will more likely amount to ‘leadership learning’ or ‘leadership training’. The knowledge and skills gained will be like new files and programs brought to the existing operating system… True development is about transforming the operating system itself, not just increasing your fund of knowledge or your behavioral repertoire” (p. 6).
• Development is uneven, going in fits and starts over time: “Development does not unfold continuously; there are periods of stability and periods of change. When a new plateau is reached we tend to stay on that level for a considerable period of time (although elaborations and extensions within each system can certainly occur). The intervals between transformations to new levels—‘time on a plateau’—get longer and longer. The line gets thinner, representing fewer and fewer people at the higher plateaus” (p. 15).
• There are three systems that make meaning: the socialized mind, consisting of team-playing, seeking direction and following others; self-authoring mind, where we lead others and follow our own conclusions; and self-transforming mind, which the authors classify as a "meta-leader" who leads in order to continue learning and is interdependent with others.
• The authors use a three-column model that classifies:
1) (Behavior goals) Visible commitments we make
2) (Behaviors that work against the goals)-- things that we do instead of or in spite of our goals
3) Hidden competing commitments that we may not actively be aware of or otherwise considering
• There's a lot of discussion today about how to manage anxiety (and plenty of source of anxiety). Although those who are good at managing anxiety are often successful in business, the authors caution us: “Successful people—develop anxiety-management systems that are very robust and self-sustaining, and they permit us to function in wide variety of situations. But we run these systems—even highly successful anxiety-management systems—at a cost. Inevitably, they create blind spots, prevent new learning, and constantly constrain action in some aspects of our living. These costs show up when we are unable to deliver on some genuinely desired change, the realization of which would bring us to a new, higher level of functioning in ways we truly want to attain” (p. 48).
• They introduce the idea of seeking "720-degree feedback", where we not only ask key work stakeholders to evaluate us, but also those in our personal lives.
...more

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Feb 16, 2018 Meeta Lee rated it it was amazing

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. When I told somebody that I was reading a book called “Immunity to Change” by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey, I was asked if I was reading it to become immune to change! Well, the book definitely does not tell you how to become immune to change but it describes how to overcome immunity and unlock the potential in yourself and your organisation.
According to Kegan and Lahey, desire and motivation aren’t enough to go about making a change, even if it’s a matter of life or death. So then, what d When I told somebody that I was reading a book called “Immunity to Change” by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey, I was asked if I was reading it to become immune to change! Well, the book definitely does not tell you how to become immune to change but it describes how to overcome immunity and unlock the potential in yourself and your organisation.
According to Kegan and Lahey, desire and motivation aren’t enough to go about making a change, even if it’s a matter of life or death. So then, what does one do to overcome this immunity? The key is to uproot this immunity. Everybody is convinced that improvement and change is dynamic and this challenge is often misunderstood as a need to cope or deal with the complexity. Coping and dealing with something are skills, and valuable skills at that. But to overcome immunity to change is more than just skills. It is about understanding yourself – which we all think we do – and by identifying a widespread misconception about the potential trajectory of mental development across one’s lifespan. The X-ray technology is one such tool which explains the hidden dynamics of immunity to change. This tool talks about discovering the hidden competing commitments within us which will help us overcome the resistance to change.
This book also helps one discover the three levels of mental complexity which are the socialised mind, the self authoring mind and the self transforming mind and according to a research done by Eigel – University of Georgia, in 1998, the highly effective leaders are at the self transforming level. People who are at the level of the socialised mind are strongly influenced by what they believe others want and how they think others will be influenced, whilst those in the self authoring level strongly believe that their decision is what is needed by the others. They are likely to the drivers. The self authoring minds on the other hand have a filter and these people can stand back from the filter and not only look at it but through it.
This book is packed with powerful illustrations and examples which can help at an individual and organisational level. Many business books on change present simple solutions to problems with which managers have long wrestled. This book, on the other hand, offers a complex mental and philosophical methodology to identify the overwhelming barrier to individual and organizational change.
Kegan and Laskow, have been research and practice collaborators for twenty five years. Kegan is the William and Miriam Meehan Professor in Adult Learning and Professional Development at Harvard’s University’s Graduate School of Education. Lahey is the Associate Director of Harvard’s Change Leadership Group and a founding principal of Minds at Work, a leadership learning professional services firm.

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Aug 28, 2017 Mohammad Ali Abedi rated it liked it

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 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 in our lives, there are other things that we don’t want to change that we are not fully aware of, and that is the thing that prevents the change.

For example, imagine you want to lose weight, but you want to commit to going to the gym, but you constantly fail. If you study yourself, you realize the reason you don’t like going to the gym, it’s because you think that people who go to the gym have too much time on their hands and are shallow. So, if you do actually go to the gym, the assumption might be that you are also wasting your time and shallow. Therefore, you would have to address that assumption first, change that, remove the immunity to that particular change, so you can go ahead and do it.

Therefore, the idea is mainly that before we rush forward with dozens of new resolutions, maybe we need to first think more carefully about what are behind our own created obstacles. Remove those obstacles, and it will be easier to change. There are tables and steps to help you do that. However, to get to that is where I find the fault with the book. To sell you on the idea, it seems that the authors are selling their consultancy services more. They use real life case studies, but not only are they boring and repetitive and stretched out, but they seem like customer testaments in random business websites. Of course, any company’s own case studies from their consultancy projects in their books will show how utterly fantastic their work was and everyone’s lives changed.

Remove all that extra fat and concentrate on the actual practices in the last chapter, and I think there is something that can be gained from it. ...more

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Aug 13, 2021 David Baer rated it did not like it

Shelves: dnf

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

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Jan 30, 2022 Ruta Alb rated it liked it

Shelves: turiu-šią-knygą

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

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Dec 28, 2019 Chris Weatherburn rated it really liked it

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

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Oct 09, 2021 Zoë rated it liked it

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

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Jul 05, 2019 JP rated it really liked it

Shelves: personal-growth, business, non-fiction

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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About Robert Kegan

Robert Kegan

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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.” — 6 likes

“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.” — 5 likes

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