You Can Be Ready for Change and Still Not Be Ready

We jokingly named it our "easy breezy" trip.

My wife Tiffany and I were heading to Indonesia for an extended stay to explore the possibility of being digital nomads. We'd rented out our house in San Diego, bought one-way tickets, and deliberately left things more open-ended than either of us were used to. There was no rigid itinerary. No every-hotel-booked-in-advance plan. Just a loose sense of direction and a genuine intention to go with the flow.

EASY BREEZY!

*cue the ominous music*

I had done a lot of inner work before we left: I’d consciously chosen this change. I’d been talking a lot about it. Mentally processing it. Welcomed the “adventure” of uncertainty. Batted down every thought of “This will never work.” I was ready for it.

And there I was on day five, with a growing list in my head of every reason this will never work. 😩

The Wi-Fi wasn't strong enough. The chaos of Bali was too much. There’s not enough space to work. We didn't know enough yet to make good decisions about where to go next. Every unknown felt like evidence that we'd made a mistake.

I hadn't failed to prepare. I had prepared thoroughly - mentally, intentionally, consciously.

But my nervous system didn't care. It ran its ancient hardwiring anyway. Scanned for threat. Found uncertainty. Sounded the alarm.

And I teach this for a living! 

But as I always say, NO ONE is immune to the stress response. 

Eventually I caught what was happening, named it, and redirected. (And we'll get to how in a minute.)

Here’s an important lesson that moment taught me that two decades of working with Fortune 500 companies had already confirmed over and over again: you can do everything right - want the change, choose the change, prepare for the change - and still have your stress response and primitive hardwiring working against you.

Which is exactly what's happening inside your organization every time a change initiative stalls.

The Most Expensive Assumption When It Comes to Change

Let me tell you what I hear constantly from senior leaders and CHROs after a change initiative falls flat:

"We had a great strategy."

"The communication plan was solid."

"We involved people early."

"We addressed the concerns that came up."

"We don't understand why it didn't work."

I do.

The strategy lived in the advanced brain - the prefrontal cortex - where the rational, planning, logical part of you built the roadmap, aligned the stakeholders, and crafted the messaging.

Unfortunately change puts the primitive caveman brain in charge. Which means we lose the ability to be logical and rational, and become incredibly reactive and emotional.

Strategy and implementation have to start in people’s caveman brains.

What's Actually Happening When a Change Initiative "Fails"

When a well-designed change initiative doesn't stick, here's what the autopsy usually looks like:

• People seemed on board in the meetings, but didn't change their behavior afterward.
• Leadership was frustrated.
• More communication went out.
• More training was scheduled.
• A consultant was brought in.
• And still... the needle barely moved.

What nobody did is named is what was happening neurologically the entire time:

The moment the change was announced, the caveman brain took over. Amygdalas fired. Cortisol elevated. The advanced brain (the prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for learning new behaviors, adopting new processes, and executing new strategies) lost blood flow and went partially offline.

Your change initiative was designed by advanced brains.

But it landed in caveman brains.

And then - here's the part that really matters - the initiative proceeded anyway. As if that distinction didn't exist.

Training happened. Rollout continued. Milestones were hit. Metrics were tracked.

And the humans executing it were quietly running on caveman brain - in fight-or-flight mode, tunnel-visioning, being reactive, doing everything they could just to keep up - while the organization wondered why the advanced thinking wasn't happening.

New behaviors require the advanced brain to be online. Learning requires the hippocampus to be functioning. Collaboration requires oxytocin to be flowing. Creativity requires the caveman brain to stand down.

Change initiatives assume all of that is happening.

But they’re typically not.

The Day Five Problem

Back to Indonesia.

What I caught myself doing on day five wasn't unique to me or to that trip. It was my caveman brain doing exactly what caveman brains do when they're processing significant change in unfamiliar conditions with uncertain outcomes: it started cataloging threats.

Not because the threats were real. Not because Indonesia wasn't going to work. Not because my advanced brain had assessed the situation and found it lacking.

My advanced brain knew we'd made a good decision. My advanced brain had done the research, made the plan, embraced the uncertainty intentionally.

My caveman brain however, did not care.

It had absorbed an enormous amount of change - new country, new environment, new rhythms, new inputs, new everything - and it defaulted to what it was built to do 200,000 years ago: It went crazy identifying all the possible dangers in order to protect me from them.

And when a caveman brain goes looking for danger, it finds it. Or it manufactures it. Either way, you end up sitting in a beautiful place on the other side of the world, your advanced brain watching helplessly while your caveman brain convinces you it's all going wrong.

I had wanted this change. Chosen it. Prepared for it.

But it didn't matter. The caveman brain’s hardwiring doesn't take intention into account.

And this is what's happening in your organization 30, 60, 90 days into a change initiative.

Not because your people are resistant. Not because the strategy was wrong. Not because leadership failed to communicate.

Because caveman brains under change load default to threat-scanning. And a threat-scanning caveman brain is not executing your change initiative. It's protecting itself from it - while your people's advanced brains watch from the back seat, unable to take the wheel.

What I Did on Day Five - And What You Can Do With Your Team

The goal with each of these isn't to eliminate the caveman brain - you can't, and you wouldn't want to. It's to give the advanced brain enough runway to get back online and do what it's actually capable of.

1. Name What's Happening Before You Try to Fix It

The first thing I did on day five was notice what was actually going on. Not fix it. Not push through it. Just name it.

My caveman brain is cataloguing threats. This is what healthy nervous systems do during significant change. This is my brain doing its job.

That act of naming - what neuroscientists call affect labeling - is the fastest on-ramp back to the advanced brain. Research from UCLA shows that simply putting a feeling into words reduces amygdala activation within seconds. It's not a soft skill. It's a direct intervention in the caveman brain's threat response, and it works faster than almost anything else you can do in the moment.

For your change initiative: Stop scheduling more communication when people seem stuck and start creating structured space to name what's actually happening. Town halls where people can voice what their nervous systems are experiencing - not just their logical objections - are opportunities to get the caveman brain to stand down long enough for the advanced brain to engage. Use them that way.

2. Take One SMALL Intentional Action

After I named what was happening, I didn't try to solve Indonesia. My caveman brain would have hijacked that conversation. Instead I did one small, intentional thing - found a coffee shop with reliable Wi-Fi, did two hours of solid work, and let that be a win.

That's the science of behavioral activation: action precedes motivation, not the other way around. Stress blocks the chemistry you need to feel motivated and ready to act. Waiting to feel ready before moving is a physiological dead end - that feeling isn't coming while the stress response is running.

What actually works is moving first. Even a small, low-stakes action releases the brain chemistry that generates motivation, momentum, and confidence. The readiness follows the action. It rarely precedes it.

For your change initiative: Identify the smallest possible action that represents the new behavior and make it easy to do immediately. Not the full behavior change - the smallest version of it. Get the caveman brain out of the way by making the first step so small it doesn't register as a threat. Then advanced brain can take over from there.

3. Use the Window, Don't Just Survive It

Here's the thing nobody tells you about change (and it's the one that completely reframes everything): The caveman brain's disruption is also the advanced brain's greatest opportunity.

When familiar patterns have been broken - when the old way is no longer operating - the brain is in its most neuroplastic state. It’s most capable of forming new patterns. Most open to wiring in new behaviors permanently. Neuroscience calls this a neuroplasticity window, and it opens precisely because the caveman brain has been shaken loose from its defaults.

The organizations that adapt the best treat this neuroplasticity window as the most valuable real estate in the entire initiative.

In Indonesia, being in an entirely new environment with no established routines meant my advanced brain was unusually free to form new patterns - new ideas about how work might be possible, new ways of doing things, new opportunities. The disruption that my caveman brain was treating as a threat was creating exactly the conditions my advanced brain needed to grow fastest.

For your change initiative: The 30-90 day window after a major change announcement is not the time to ease up while people adjust. It's the highest-leverage window you have for wiring in new behaviors permanently. The caveman brain has been disrupted. The advanced brain is plastic and ready. Build intensive support, coaching, and reinforcement into that window specifically, because this is exactly when it will stick.

4. Don't Let People Navigate It Alone

The last thing that made the difference in Indonesia was my wife, Tiffany.

Not because she necessarily solved anything or had better answers. But because the presence of another regulated human (luckily we almost never freak out at the exact same time) literally changes our physiological experience of the same situation.

This is social baseline theory, developed by neuroscientist James Coan at the University of Virginia. The caveman brain actually calculates the metabolic cost of threat based on whether trusted people are present. When they are, the threat registers as less costly and the stress response measurably lowers. A regulated nervous system in the room is one of the most powerful tools available for bringing other nervous systems out of threat mode.

One calm advanced brain can help pull another out of caveman mode. That's not a metaphor. That's neuroscience.

For your change initiative: peer cohorts, buddy systems, and team check-ins during change periods aren't soft culture initiatives - they're caveman brain management strategies. They directly reduce the threat load so the advanced brain can get back online and actually execute the strategy it was handed. Build them in deliberately. 

The Bottom Line

Your change initiatives don't fail because the strategies are wrong.

They fail because the strategies are built by advanced brains and handed to caveman brains - and nobody bridges the gap.

If you don’t get caveman brain on board with the program, advanced brain is certainly not jumping on.

Understand this and your strategy lands. Ignore it and you'll be back here in eighteen months wondering why the latest one didn't stick either.

If your organization is struggling with change, check out my keynote session for leaders and employees The Neuroscience of Change: It's Not What You Think