What Dr. Brown observed is the human fallout of the change equation applied without addressing expectancy theory or providing endings and paying respect to the past.

With respect to the latter, when we portray the current state as wholly undesirable, we risk making the story of someone’s time at a company until now irrelevant, perhaps shameful. Their actions, which have bought them to the very point they are today, were not good enough.

For the former, unless we address people’s perception that they have self efficacy, we trap them in a prison.

Too often I have seen change handled as a simple “make the past unpleasant and the future attractive” Pavlovian exercise. The results for the people, the humans, are as Dr Brown noted. We should take care when using these tools, they can make some problems far worse.