Change fitness in practice: how proven theories combine into a single, trainable capability

Change isn’t a single event to “manage.” It’s a capability you can build. The engine we use is Change Fitness — a trainable psychological capacity that lets leaders and teams adapt repeatedly without burning out. Around that engine sit proven theories that reinforce specific parts of the capability. This article shows how those pieces fit together and what it looks like in practice.

What we mean by change fitness

Change Fitness is the set of interdependent human resources that determine how effectively you approach, engage, and sustain change. They work like muscles: they can be assessed, strengthened, and combined.

• Motivation: Sustained energy to engage with change.
• Agency: Belief that your actions influence outcomes.
• Trust: Confidence in self, others, and the process.
• Balance: Emotional steadiness under pressure.
• Insight: Pattern recognition and causal understanding.
• Vision: Clarity about desirable future states.
• Empowering beliefs: Narratives that support adaptive action.

When one resource is weak, it constrains the others. When they grow together, leaders move from coping to creating. This is the hub. The theories below are the spokes that amplify particular resources and help sequence development.

How the theories combine around the hub

Think of each theory as a lens that strengthens specific Change Fitness resources and informs how we design experiences.

1) Transtheoretical Model (TTM): stage-based momentum

• What it adds: A shared map of progression (from not ready to sustained action) with normalised recycling.
• Resources it boosts: Motivation, Agency, Empowering beliefs.
• How we use it: We match interventions to the current stage (e.g., raising awareness and perceived discrepancy before asking for action), and we design re-entry ramps so setbacks become learning loops, not failures.

Example: A leader in “contemplation” gets targeted exercises to surface costs of the status quo and low-risk trials to build self-efficacy, rather than being pushed into a full rollout plan.

2) Armenakis’ change message framework: belief architecture

• What it adds: Five belief levers — discrepancy, appropriateness, efficacy, principal support, personal valence — that drive readiness.
• Resources it boosts: Trust, Agency, Vision, Empowering beliefs.
• How we use it: Every communication and ritual is engineered to answer those five questions, turning messaging into sensemaking that grows the psychological muscles, not just compliance.

Example: In a town hall, we explicitly connect “why change now” to customer data (discrepancy), show a clear path (appropriateness), spotlight peers who have succeeded (efficacy), have senior sponsors present (principal support), and translate benefits for each role (personal valence).

3) Popper’s leadership development: the human foundation

• What it adds: Emphasis on self-confidence, prosocial orientation, openness, proactive optimism, and learning via experience and others.
• Resources it boosts: Agency, Trust, Motivation, Balance.
• How we use it: We design rotations, shadowing, and coached reflection that cultivate these building blocks so leaders’ default stance toward change becomes constructive and outward-looking.

Example: Pairing emerging leaders with “edge” assignments plus a reflective practice increases self-confidence and prosocial behaviour, which stabilises teams during uncertainty.

4) Bloom’s taxonomy and cognitive psychology: scaffolding the work

• What it adds: A way to calibrate cognitive load and design progression from remembering to creating, plus insights on self-efficacy, deliberate practice, and feedback.
• Resources it boosts: Insight, Vision, Agency.
• How we use it: Every module and project is built to move from understanding → applying → analysing → creating, with tasks, reflection, and feedback aligned to the next level of complexity.

Example: Before asking a team to “design the new operating rhythm” (create), we ensure they can explain current bottlenecks (understand), trial small fixes (apply), and compare alternatives (analyse).

5) Kauffman and complexity: designing conditions for emergence

• What it adds: The “adjacent possible,” self-organisation, and the value of operating at the edge of order where learning is fastest.
• Resources it boosts: Insight, Vision, Balance.
• How we use it: We set enabling constraints (clear purpose, simple rules, tight feedback) and create safe-to-try experiments so new capabilities emerge and stabilise without command-and-control fatigue.

Example: Introduce a rule like “Any team can run a two-week experiment under £5k with a one-slide brief and commit to sharing results.” This unlocks adjacent possibles without overwhelming governance.

Together, these lenses keep your Change Fitness practical. They tell you what to do now, why it works, and how to make it stick.

The integrative operating system

Here’s the simple, repeatable way we bring the hub-and-spokes model to life.

1. Assess and focus
   • What we do: Baseline the seven Change Fitness resources for key leaders and teams; map current stage (TTM) and belief gaps (Armenakis).
   • Why it matters: You stop guessing. Interventions target the one or two constraints throttling momentum.
2. Sequence the stretch
   • What we do: Match tasks to current stage and the smallest next step that increases self-efficacy.
   • Why it matters: Momentum compounds when people feel repeated wins; Bloom-level alignment prevents overwhelm.
3. Build enabling conditions
   • What we do: Clarify purpose, set simple rules, tighten feedback loops, and allocate protected time for experiments.
   • Why it matters: You shift from pushing change to growing capability; emergence does the heavy lifting.
4. Layer experiential and vicarious learning
   • What we do: Rotate stretch projects, create peer shadowing, and run structured debriefs.
   • Why it matters: Popper’s insight — we learn deeply through doing and observing — becomes part of your operating rhythm.
5. Message as sensemaking
   • What we do: Every communication explicitly reinforces the five readiness beliefs.
   • Why it matters: Communication stops being “updates” and starts being training for Trust, Agency, and Vision.
6. Measure and recycle
   • What we do: Track resource growth, habit adoption, and business outcomes; expect recycling and plan re-entry points.
   • Why it matters: You institutionalise learning without rigidity and avoid the “initiative of the month” trap.

What it looks like in real organisations

Example 1: The fatigued scale-up

• Context: A 300-person tech company has tried three planning frameworks in two years. Teams are cynical; product cycles slip.
• Assessment: High Motivation (they care), low Balance (emotional regulation), weak Trust (in leaders’ follow-through), mixed Agency.
• Interventions:
  • Stage match: Treat most teams as in “contemplation.” Start with small, reversible experiments to raise self-efficacy.
  • Sensemaking: Leadership roadshows built on the five belief levers; explicit acknowledgement of prior false starts to rebuild Trust.
  • Scaffolded work: Two-week “adjacent possible” sprints with Bloom-aligned goals — understand current cycle time drivers → apply a single constraint change → analyse results → propose a new pattern.
  • Experiential + vicarious: Cross-team demos every Friday; peers present successes and failures.
• Outcomes (12 weeks):
  • Behaviour: 41 experiments run; demo attendance >80%.
  • Capability: Balance and Trust scores rise; Agency improves as teams see their changes land.
  • Business: Cycle time variance drops; one experiment scales org-wide, reducing rework 15%.
• Why it worked: Interventions targeted the real constraints (Balance, Trust) and used complexity principles to let better patterns emerge.

Example 2: Public sector digital rollout

• Context: A regional department is implementing a new case management system. Prior rollouts sparked resistance.
• Assessment: Motivation moderate, Agency low, Empowering beliefs fragmented (“We’ve seen tools come and go”), Vision unclear at the frontline.
• Interventions:
  • Belief architecture: Co-created story that ties the system to better outcomes for citizens (discrepancy, appropriateness, personal valence); visible executive backing (principal support).
  • Stage-based training: Different paths for precontemplation (observe a peer using the system with real cases), preparation (guided practice on edge cases), action (coaching at desks).
  • Bloom scaffold: Move from remembering steps → applying to real cases → analysing error patterns → creating local workflows.
  • Enabling constraints: “No case can be closed without entering three specific fields” — a simple rule that nudges adoption while leaving room for local innovation.
• Outcomes (8 weeks):
  • Behaviour: Adoption reaches 92% without overtime spikes.
  • Capability: Agency and Empowering beliefs improve; helpdesk calls drop as Insight grows.
  • Service: First-contact resolution improves 8%.
• Why it worked: Messaging trained beliefs, learning was sequenced, and constraints made the right behaviour easier.

Example 3: Executive coaching for a new GM

• Context: A first-time general manager inherits a siloed unit post-merger.
• Assessment: Strong Vision, uneven Balance, low Trust across the unit, Agency fragile after the merger.
• Interventions:
  • Personal Change Fitness plan: Daily practices for Balance (physiological regulation, reflection) and Trust (high-signal 1:1s, commitments kept).
  • Popper-designed experiences: The GM leads one cross-silo project with visible support, shadowing a seasoned integrator; weekly debriefs focus on prosocial signals and self-confidence growth.
  • Complexity framing: Define three simple rules for the unit (share work in draft, decide with the people who do the work, run a small test before a policy change).
• Outcomes (16 weeks):
  • Behaviour: Cross-silo collaboration rises; “draft shares” become the norm.
  • Capability: Balance stabilises; Trust indicators improve; the GM’s Agency increases as wins accumulate.
  • Business: Time-to-decision shortens; duplicate work declines.
• Why it worked: The leader’s Change Fitness grew in tandem with enabling conditions, making cultural change natural rather than forced.

What this means for your organisation

• You can build capacity, not just run projects. Change Fitness turns adaptability into a strategic asset you can measure and grow.
• You reduce burnout by matching stretch to readiness. Sequencing and Bloom-aligned tasks protect energy while accelerating learning.
• You communicate to create capability. Messages designed with belief levers increase Trust, Agency, and Vision every time you speak.
• You scale through emergence, not heroics. Enabling constraints and short feedback loops let better ways of working spread organically.

If you want to see where your leaders and teams stand today, we can run a rapid Change Fitness snapshot, identify the two constraints limiting momentum, and outline the smallest next steps that unlock the adjacent possible in your context.