The Curse of the "Fixer"
I have a confession to make: I am incapable of looking at a broken process and walking away.
Throughout my career, this trait has been both a blessing and a curse. I’m the person who sees a software team drowning in bureaucracy, or a release cycle that takes six months for a one-line code change, and I have a pathological need to fix it. I’ve spent years working with organisations, trying to help them optimise their development practices, move away from rigid planning, and actually deliver value.
But more often than I care to admit, I’ve hit a brick wall.
I would present the data. I would show the cycle times. I would prove, mathematically, that the rigid need for predictability was damaging our ability to continuously deliver value. And yet, leadership would nod, agree, and then proceed to change absolutely nothing. It has always mystified me. Why, when presented with the solution to their problems, do smart people cling so tightly to the very systems that are sinking them?
The "Aha" Moment
I began to understand why in the most unexpected place.
I was recently reading Dan Brown’s new novel, The Secret of Secrets. I was trying to switch off from thinking about work, but I noticed an interesting passage that made me pause. Our protagonist, Robert Langdon, references the seminal work of philosopher Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
The book references Kuhn's argument that a paradigm-altering change cannot truly take place until it has reached a "critical mass." Until that tipping point is reached, the old way of thinking doesn't just persist, it actively fights to survive to protect the status quo.
"Normal science, for example, often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic commitments." — Thomas Kuhn
It changed my perspective on the resistance I’ve faced in boardrooms. It wasn't about logic, and it wasn't about data. It was about the psychology of belief.
The Guardian's Dilemma
It is easy to vilify resistant leaders as stubborn or self-interested, but that is rarely the truth. Most leaders aren't resisting because they are trying to protect their jobs, they are resisting because they are trying to protect the company.
These leaders view themselves as the guardians of the organisation's stability and growth. They are responsible for revenue, churn, and shareholder value. When we propose a shift to a Product Operating Model, moving from "fixed scope and dates" to "outcomes and experimentation", they don't hear "agility." They hear "risk."
This reaction is rooted in Loss Aversion. As explained by Wall Street Prep, the psychological pain of a potential loss (e.g., a dip in revenue or a failed release) is twice as powerful as the pleasure of an equivalent gain.
"Loss aversion refers to the tendency for people to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring equivalent gains... The pain of losing is psychologically about twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining." — Behavioural Economics Principle
To a conscientious leader, the "known bad" of the current model feels safer than the "unknown good" of the new one. They stick to the old ways not out of ignorance, but out of a genuine, albeit misplaced, duty to prevent irreparable damage to the metrics that matter.
The Biology of "No"
This protective instinct is reinforced by our biology. Organisations are made of human beings, and despite what we'd like to believe, human beings are not data-driven machines, we are emotional, biological creatures.
According to research on the neuroscience of change by groups like Neurofied and Eighth Mile Consulting, the brain is wired to perceive uncertainty not as an intellectual challenge, but as a physical threat. When a leader is told to embrace "empiricism" (where the outcome isn't known upfront), it triggers the amygdala.
This flight-or-fight response bypasses the logic centres of the prefrontal cortex. The resistance you face is a biological safety mechanism. The brain favours the path of least resistance because it requires less caloric energy. This is Cognitive Inertia: the tendency to persist in established mental models simply because they are established.
Identity-Protective Cognition
Beyond the fear of damaging the company, there is also the subtle force of Identity-Protective Cognition (IPC).
Yale researcher Dan Kahan’s work suggests that we process information to protect our standing within our "tribe." If a Project Manager has spent 20 years mastering the art of the Gantt chart to give stakeholders a sense of certainty, they have built their professional identity on being "The Predictor."
To accept that predictability is impossible in software is to admit that their primary skill set is no longer relevant.
This triggers Identity-Protective Reasoning. The more data you provide contradicting their worldview, the more they may double down on their original belief. It’s not just about keeping a job; it’s about maintaining their sense of professional worth.
The Age of Software: A Crisis of Paradigms
This brings us back to Kuhn and the current state of our industry.
As Mik Kersten argues in Project to Product, and Carlota Perez maps in Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital, we are currently in the Turning Point of the Age of Software. The old paradigm is not the concept of a "project" itself, segmenting work is necessary. The old paradigm is the management model that demands we predict the scope, time, and cost of those segments before we have even begun.
But the anomalies are piling up. The failed digital transformations, the tech debt bankruptcies, and the inability of legacy banks to compete with digital natives, these are the cracks in the paradigm.
"Technological revolutions are not just about new technology; they are about the new common sense... The old way of doing things no longer works, and the new way is not yet fully understood." — Carlota Perez
The Inevitable End
So, does this biology of resistance mean I am giving up? Absolutely not.
I will not stop pushing for this change. I will continue to highlight the flaws in the old system, continue to provide the data, and continue to build the psychological safety required for leaders to let go of the illusion of control. I am committed to helping this industry reach that tipping point.
But I am also realistic. The "Product" way of thinking has been around for over two decades, yet we are still fighting for it. This suggests that the Critical Mass of belief Kuhn described has not yet been achieved. While I will keep fighting, history suggests that if we cannot win the argument, the paradigm shift will happen in one of two ways:
1. The Generational Shift (The Max Planck Route) As physicist Max Planck famously noted, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents... but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." It is possible that we are simply waiting for the old guard to retire, making way for a generation that doesn't need to be convinced that the world is uncertain, because they've never known it to be anything else.
2. The Extinction Event (The Perez & Kersten Route) If organisations refuse to adapt, the market will make the decision for them. As Mik Kersten and Carlota Perez predict, we are exiting the installation phase of this technological revolution. The companies that cannot adopt the new "common sense" will simply fail, replaced by the digital natives and adaptive firms that embraced the new paradigm.
I’m betting on the change. Whether it happens through enlightenment, retirement, or extinction is up to us.