The formula for change says that dissatisfaction with how things are now, multiplied by a vision of what good looks like, multiplied by concrete first steps, must be greater than the resistance to changing. It is usually credited to Richard Beckhard and Reuben Harris, building on earlier work by David Gleicher. The critical word is multiplied: miss any one of the three and the product is zero, however hard you push the other two.
Change in a business is not a matter of how badly the owner wants it. It is a contest between three things pushing and one thing pushing back — and because the three that push do not add up, a strength in one cannot compensate for a gap in another.
Why multiplication is the whole point
If the three factors added, you could compensate. A weak vision could be carried by strong dissatisfaction. That is not how it works, and anyone who has tried to force a change through on frustration alone already knows it.
Dissatisfaction with no vision
Produces anxiety. People agree the current state is bad, have no picture of the alternative, and conclude that things are about to get worse. That is what a stressed owner sounds like after six weeks of telling the team that this cannot go on.
Vision with no dissatisfaction
Produces polite indifference. You paint a picture of a business with proper systems and a management team, and everyone nods, because the current arrangement suits them fine. Nothing in the picture answers the question they are actually asking, which is why bother.
Dissatisfaction and vision with no first step
Produces a very good meeting and no change. This is by far the most common of the three. Everyone leaves fired up, nobody knows what to do on Monday morning, and by Wednesday it has been absorbed back into the week.
Resistance is information, not stupidity
The right-hand side gets treated as an obstacle to overcome. It is more useful as data. Resistance is the honest sum of what the change costs the people being asked to make it: relearning something they were good at, losing a bit of status, an extra twenty minutes a day, the risk of looking incompetent in front of colleagues — and the entirely rational memory of the last three initiatives that were dropped. That last one matters more than owners think. In a business that has started and abandoned several things, resistance carries a large fixed cost that has nothing to do with the current idea. You are not arguing against the change; you are arguing against your own track record.
Working it through with numbers
Score each factor out of ten and multiply. The scores are invented and always will be. The arithmetic is the useful part, because it shows which lever is worth pulling.
Take the owner of a nine-person surveying practice trying to move the team off paper job sheets onto a proper system. Illustrative figures throughout. Dissatisfaction sits at about 3: the paper system is annoying, it works, and the people using it are not the people who suffer from it. Vision is 7, because the owner has explained the destination well and it is genuinely attractive. First steps are 2 — the plan is “we are moving to the new system in the autumn”, which is not a step, it is a season. Three times seven times two is 42. Resistance, on the same rough scale, is high: nine people each facing a fortnight of feeling slow at something they are currently fast at, plus two previous systems bought and quietly dropped. Call it 200. The change does not happen, and no amount of enthusiasm at the Monday meeting alters that.
Now change two things. The owner spends twenty minutes pulling the real cost of the paper system out of last year: three jobs where variations were done and never invoiced, worth around £11,400 between them, plus the fortnight of admin spent chasing sheets at year end. Dissatisfaction moves from 3 to 8 — and it moves for the team as well as the owner, because now they can see it. Then the first step is redefined from “we are moving in the autumn” to “on Tuesday morning, each of you records one job on the new system with me sitting next to you, and it will take ten minutes”. First steps go from 2 to 8. Eight times seven times eight is 448, against resistance of 200.
Same vision, same people, same system. What changed was the evidence and the size of the first step. Notice which lever did nothing: vision stayed at 7 throughout, and lifting it to 9 would have taken the first version from 42 to 54 — still nowhere. Owners who are natural communicators reach for vision every time, because it is the factor they are best at, and it is very often the one with the least room left in it.
How to use it this week
- Score all four factors out of ten for the change that has stalled. Do it from the team’s point of view rather than your own. Your dissatisfaction score is irrelevant.
- Find the lowest of the three that push. That is where your effort goes. Not the one you enjoy — the lowest one.
- Put a real number on the status quo. What did the current way cost last year, in pounds, hours or lost jobs? Evidence moves dissatisfaction; opinion does not.
- Shrink the first step until it is almost insulting. One job, ten minutes, on Tuesday, with you sitting there. If it takes longer than an hour, it is not a first step.
- List the resistance out loud with the team. Ask what this costs them and write it up. Half of what you hear will be fixable and the rest is worth knowing.
- Deal with the graveyard. Name the last initiative you dropped, say why, and say what is different this time. If nothing is different, do not start.
Pressure appears nowhere in the formula. Pushing harder usually raises resistance instead, because it adds the cost of arguing with you to everything else on the list. And there is a real difference between showing people the £11,400 and telling them they should be unhappy: the first is evidence and survives scrutiny, the second is theatre, and people who feel managed rather than informed remember it.
Questions to ask yourself
- Out of 10, how dissatisfied is your team with the current way — as opposed to how dissatisfied you are?
- What is the first step in your current change, and could somebody start it before lunch tomorrow without asking anyone a question?
- How many things have you started and quietly dropped in the last three years? What does that number do to the resistance side?
- Which factor do you always reach for first, and what does that tell you about the changes that have failed?
Where this fits in coaching
This sum sits underneath the change work in our leadership coaching, because most stalled changes in small businesses are not people problems — they are arithmetic problems, and the missing factor is almost always the first step. Read it alongside The 5 A’s of Change, which is the same territory expressed as a sequence of stages, and the Goldilocks target, which is how to size the destination so the vision is believable in the first place.
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Frequently asked questions
Which factor should I work on first?
The lowest one, which is rarely the one you enjoy. Score dissatisfaction, vision and first steps out of ten from the team’s point of view, then multiply. Because the factors multiply, effort spent on a seven while a two sits next to it barely moves the product at all: lifting a vision from seven to nine changes very little, while lifting first steps from two to eight changes everything. Natural communicators reach for vision, operators reach for planning, and both are usually reaching for the factor with the least room left in it. Score first, then decide, rather than the other way round.
How do I raise dissatisfaction without frightening people?
Use evidence rather than emotion, and pair it immediately with the vision and the first step. Dissatisfaction on its own creates anxiety, which is why owners who spend six weeks warning that this cannot go on end up with a nervous team and no change. What works is a specific number the team can verify — the invoices missed, the hours lost, the jobs that went out wrong — presented once, alongside what good looks like and what happens on Tuesday morning. Manufactured dissatisfaction is different from surfaced dissatisfaction, and people can tell which one they are being handed.
What if resistance is simply too high?
Then lower it rather than pushing harder, because pressure does not appear in the formula and usually makes resistance worse. Ask the people affected what the change actually costs them and write the answers up. Some of it will be practical and fixable — time, training, a fortnight of feeling slow at something they are currently fast at. Some of it will be your own track record of starting things and dropping them, which no amount of enthusiasm addresses. Name the last initiative you abandoned, say why, and say what is different this time. If nothing is genuinely different, do not start.