Inside the Messy Middle is a special series from The Inner Game of Change
This fortnightly short series is for people who carry responsibility inside complexity.
Between strategy and delivery. Between intent and impact. Between what was imagined and what must now be made real.
In this episode of Inside the Messy Middle, I explore a salient idea:
What if organisations are not resisting change…
but being pulled back by the gravity of the current way of working?
As AI enters workplaces, many organisations are introducing new capabilities while still operating inside environments designed for older workflows, behaviours, incentives, and assumptions.
Through stories from business and history, including the arrival of electricity in factories and the persistence of the QWERTY keyboard, Ali explores why transformation often stalls even when people are willing to move.
This episode is about:
• behavioural gravity
• environmental design
• AI adoption versus workflow redesign
• why old systems keep pulling people back
• and the hidden tension between movement and stability inside organisations
Because sometimes the challenge is not the future itself.
It is the environment still rewarding the past.
Ali Juma
@The Inner Game of Change podcast
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