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When we force change, people freeze. When we offer choice, they move.
Most change efforts fail not because people don’t care, but because they feel trapped. Transformation succeeds when people feel that their agency is real — when they experience the freedom to act, even within constraints.
In my earlier post, What if I told you that you don’t need to change minds to create powerful change? I showed why persuasion is overrated and why behavior is the real lever of change.
A sense of agency among those impacted by transformation is vital for success. Agency fuels creativity, ownership, and trust — the oxygen of transformation. Let’s explore how you can activate agency among the people your transformational initiatives impact!
Why choice matters — even when options shrink
Think about a specific cause or movement you’d like to advance. Is it an institutional shift, a regulatory reform, a workforce uplift, or something entirely new?
Trying to make people care is often a waste of goodwill and resources. Forcing behavior may produce short-term compliance, but sustained change grows from agency. Feeling like a victim drains both creativity and courage, while agency restores both the will and capacity to co-create.
Even when we feel “in control,” we’re usually operating within constraints — rules, social codes, budgets, borders. Transformation triggers fear because it spotlights what we can no longer choose — the options we do NOT have — igniting defensiveness that can compromise outcomes.
The task isn’t to remove constraints — it’s to activate agency within them.
Image credit: 지원 이 from Pixabay
Agency comes from the freedom to act, not the absence of boundaries.
What all changemakers can learn from surgeons
As a changemaker, think of yourself as a surgeon. A relaxed — empowered, prepared, and supported — patient optimizes outcomes. When disrupting lives, you take every opportunity to make people feel good about choosing to trust your expertise.
“Date? Time? Dietary restrictions? Heated blankets? Any questions? Here’s the call button.”Every small choice signals respect.
Imagine if patients routinely rebelled against procedures they needed — or if hospitals withheld vital information. What if we tricked people into surgery? Transformation is no different: without informed choice, trust collapses.
(Sidebar: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn captured this truth in Cancer Ward(1966), one of the most powerful meditations on human agency ever written.)
How does thinking of yourself as a surgeon change how you see your current change effort? Share your reflections in the comments — I’ll feature a few in an upcoming post.
The three pathways to activating agency
I’ve tested three tactics that reliably activate agency with all its benefits.
1. State the non-negotiables
Those impacted by your transformation want surprise as much as you want to wake up from anesthesia missing a limb. Surprises break trust in ways that are often irreparable.
Too often, we infantilize people in change processes — judging them for apathy while withholding the facts they deserve. Expecting the worst becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Think of police in full riot gear showing up to a picnic: a mismatch between posture and context can trigger the very resistance it seeks to prevent.
As a changemaker, you’re asking people to give you a chance — to show up with an open mind, not with Molotov cocktails. You reciprocate through honesty and curiosity.
You don’t need to share everything, only what matters to those affected — especially what the change means for them. Misleading people can set the whole initiative back so far that it would have been better to sit it out.
2. Accept attrition
By stating the non-negotiables, you’ve laid out options. Now — since you are not a dictator — honor people’s choices.
Setting ambitious targets may trigger resistance: presenteeism, passive aggression, even sabotage. Instead of ignoring the elephant in the room, make choice explicit:
“To thrive, we must evolve. Here’s what that means, and why.We know this may not be what you signed up for — and we respect your decision if you choose another path.”
We often fear attrition because it feels like rejection. But allowing graceful exits builds legitimacy among those who stay. Momentum thrives when participation is voluntary.
Transformation feels like a chore when people are cornered. It becomes a choice when they’re invited to opt in.
3. Let people tailor their experience
Think back to why surgical patients feel in control: they’re offered choice wherever possible, no matter how small.
💡 Case study: turning a burning platform into an invitation to co-create
Over a decade ago, I led the change strategy for a large company standing on a burning platform — a mandate to halve its real estate footprint across 400 locations worldwide. The transformation required both technological and behavioral shifts. If we succeeded, the upside — health and wellbeing, avoided emissions, reduced materials use, less waste, biodiversity gains, and equity improvements — would be enormous. So, we went all in.
While our eventual approach drew industry recognition and awards, success hinged on something far more human: helping a workforce traumatized by ripples of layoffs transition to activity-based working (ABW).
The budget left no room for perks or frills — which made choice feel impossible. So, I got creative.
First, I fought for a symbolic but powerful choice: PC or Mac. IT initially refused, so we negotiated a workaround — Macs would run on Windows, for now. That single concession reframed the mood from compliance to collaboration.
Next, we repurposed the Occupational Health & Safety (OH&S) budget. Regulations required every employee receive an ergonomic backpack with their laptop — a well-intentioned but uninspired token. Rather than buy thousands of identical bags destined to collect dust, I argued (and won approval) to pool the $60 per-person allowance into a “personalisation fund.”
We built a virtual marketplace where employees could use points to select from dozens of items — bags, computer sleeves, headsets, photo-printed skins, and other accessories. To stretch every dollar, we sourced close-out suppliers and assembled “welcome packs” ourselves.
When Move Day arrived (staggered for thousands of staff), the energy was electric. People who had resisted the transformation unwrapped their kits with Christmas-morning excitement — and post-move surveys confirmed the cultural shift.
We defused resistance and turned compliance into collaboration — all on time and on budget.
Everyone got to decide what would make the transition both tolerable and personal. By giving choice within constraint, we transformed dread into curiosity. We defused resistance, stayed on time and on budget, and ultimately cut the real-estate footprint — and its environmental impact — by almost half. Even better, we avoided waste by buying only what people actually valued.
It’s the same principle that made the phase-out of incandescent bulbs a success: people weren’t forced into a single replacement but offered expanded choice.
Agency scales when people can shape their own experience — even if only at the margins. Small freedoms make big change possible.
💬 The next section is for paying subscribers.Here, I break down how to translate these insights into your own change efforts — including prompts to identify your non-negotiables, design for agency, and balance attrition with belonging.
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What this means in practice
