How Change Really Works With Julia Dhar - TWMJ #1057

Mitch Joel (0:00)

Well, hey there and welcome to episode number 1057 of Thinking With Mitch Joel. It's Sunday, October the 11th, 2026

Let's get on with the conversation.

Is it possible that people don't actually resist change, that they resist the change we're asking them to make? It's a distinction, but it feels kind of important right now. AI is forcing organizations into these transformations at a speed and scale. That makes it feel different from any previous wave of technology that we've seen. The leaders, they're pushing forward. The employees are wondering what happens to their jobs and what the work is going to look like. And everyone seems to agree that this is necessary. And we're doing this even when nobody's entirely sure what that destination might look like. And so that's why I was most interested in this conversation with Julia Dhar. Julia is a managing director and senior partner at the Boston Consulting Group, where she founded the Behavioral Science Lab. She's got a new book out called How Change Really Works that she co-authored with Kristy Ellmer and Philip Jameson. And they're looking at decades of behavioral science to understand why so many organizational transformations fail and what the ones that succeeded did differently. So, we land on something that I've been thinking a lot about lately, agency. Not simply giving people choices, but creating the environment where they can actually act and see that their actions have some type of impact. So, maybe successful change isn't about getting people to follow the transformation, it's about helping them believe they have a meaningful role in creating it. Enjoy the conversation.

So, who are you and what do you do?

Julia Dhar (1:55)

Mitch, I'm Julia Dhar. What I do is try to give people, teams, organizations a better shot at changing.

So, the long story is I became about 10 years ago, really frustrated with this idea that we spend a ton of effort and human potential, and by the way, also money, in organizations trying to make what I think people generally think of as a positive change and about three quarters of the time we're not successful. We should all be scandalized and disappointed and frustrated by that, especially when we know that there's really good science that gives people a better shot, a better chance of being really successful at changing. So, that's what led me to found the Behavioral Science Lab at Boston Consulting Group, and also to organize all of that thinking with two co-authors in a new book called How Change Really Works.

Mitch Joel (2:47)

That's great. What a timely and perfect book.

What I'd love to do is just get into what we're seeing now, because I actually do think in the cycle of business that you and I have been fortunate to be a part of, it feels like the transformation with artificial intelligence right now is really ruffling feathers. In one instance, I'm sure we can talk about how poorly these hyperscalers are communicating this to the actual audience.

But more importantly, I think corporately this is really interesting because it feels like a bit of a tweak on a common theme. But in the other instance, when we're actually hoping to change what really works, it does feel like there's a lot of question marks in this cycle. Employees are trying to figure out, is this going to replace me? Is this adding value? If I don't use it, I'm fired. If I use it, I might lose cognitive skills. I think leaders are struggling to see what this actually means. I think that a lot of times it's being pushed down because of bored orders. Everyone's in AI, we have to be in AI. Is this a different one or do you think it still follows this science and that these tactics of change are just as relevant for this cycle?

Julia Dhar (3:56)

Well, let me add two more questions that I think people are asking themselves, which is, will my spouse or significant other have a job? What should I tell my kid or a young person in my life about what to study or what a good career aspiration might be? And so I think you stack those on top of the thoughts that we're having about ourselves and our own jobs. And it perhaps seems really obvious that of course it's complicated for people and it's a challenge to our identity, not just as professionals or as a colleague, but also as an individual, what it means to be a person, what it means to be a member of a community.

However, we also do know that there are some things about change that are pretty universal, that basically people are capable of making a positive change when three things are present. They have to have some optimism about the future. That doesn't mean that we have to have total positivity, that it's good to be Pollyanna-ish about what's going on, but we have to believe that there are some things that can get better in the future. We have to have a relatively clear set of expectations about the near term, and we need some agency, some ability to make choices, not totally, but some ability to make choices and believe that our actions have an impact. I think part of the challenge is, many people don't have any of those three at the moment, or they have only one of those three. If we don't have those clear expectations, that optimism, that agency, if leaders aren't helping people get a sense of all three of those things inside an organization, we're missing a chance to use behavioral science really well. But even more worryingly, I think, we're missing the chance to actually tap into the human potential inside organizations.