One of the hardest things to change is a decision that has become part of someone’s identity.
A leader backed the plan in front of the board. A customer defended the purchase to a spouse. A team spent months building a system that no longer fits. A founder repeated the same strategy so often that changing direction now feels like admitting the whole idea was foolish.
The facts may have changed. The better option may be visible. Yet the old decision can still feel strangely difficult to release.
The resistance is not always about the choice itself. Sometimes it is about the story the person must tell about who they were when they made it.
A decision can become a defence of the self.
In The Divided Brain, I discuss cognitive dissonance: the discomfort that appears when our actions collide with the way we see ourselves.
Most people want to believe they are competent, thoughtful, fair, and capable of good judgment. When evidence challenges that picture, the Old Brain may register more than an intellectual correction. It can feel like a threat to status, belonging, or self-respect.
The New Brain can then become a very capable lawyer for the choice already made. It finds the exception. It explains why the circumstances were different. It points to the work already invested. It turns a decision that needs review into a story that needs protection.
This response did not appear because humans are weak or dishonest. A coherent sense of self helps us move through the world. We need some continuity between the person we were yesterday and the person we believe we are today. Under threat, protecting that continuity can feel safer than reopening the case.
The problem is that a useful defence can become a trap. We keep funding the project, repeating the message, or defending the process because changing course now feels more expensive than continuing.
Humiliation makes bad decisions harder to leave.
Leaders often respond to resistance by increasing the pressure.
They present more evidence. They point out the inconsistency. They make the error impossible to deny. Sometimes they add a little public embarrassment, believing that discomfort will force the person to face reality.
It can have the opposite effect.
If changing one’s mind now requires accepting the identity of “the person who got it wrong,” the old position may become even more valuable. The argument is no longer protecting a plan. It is protecting the person from a social and emotional loss.
This is why a technically correct message can fail. It asks someone to update the decision while making the cost of updating unnecessarily personal.
Brands can do this to customers too. “You have been doing it wrong” may create attention, but it also makes the old choice part of the accusation. The customer now has to accept the new product and a less flattering story about their past judgment.
A better message preserves the person’s dignity while making room for a better next step.
Give people a story they can move into.
There is a difference between removing accountability and removing shame.
Accountability says, “This is what happened. We need to deal with it honestly.”
Shame says, “This is what happened, and it tells us what kind of person you are.”
The first can return agency. The second often sends the Old Brain looking for cover.
A leader can say, “That decision made sense with what we knew then. We know more now, so good judgment means adjusting.”
A brand can say, “Your needs have changed. Here is an easier way to handle them now.”
A team can conduct a review that asks which assumptions changed, rather than beginning with who deserves blame.
These are not polite ways to avoid the truth. They are ways to make the truth usable. They separate the decision from the person’s whole identity, which gives the New Brain enough room to examine the evidence without spending all its energy on self-defence.
Make updating a sign of judgment.
Organizations reveal what they really value by the stories they tell about changed minds.
Do they celebrate the executive who noticed a weak assumption before it became an expensive failure? Do they thank the employee who challenged their own proposal? Do they let a customer switch plans without making the process feel like a confession?
Or do they reward certainty long after certainty has stopped being useful?
If the culture treats every change of direction as weakness, people will learn to perform confidence. They will hide doubt, defend sunk work, and wait for someone else to make the first move.
If the culture treats thoughtful updating as competence, people can tell a different story: “I did not betray my earlier judgment. I used the new information well.”
That story matters because facts do not arrive in an empty room. They arrive inside a person’s need to remain recognizable to themselves and credible to others.
Manual mode restores choice.
The goal is not to make people comfortable with every mistake. It is to create enough distance between identity and action that honest reflection becomes possible.
That is what I mean by shifting into manual mode. We notice the defensive story before it closes around the decision. We ask what we are protecting. We separate what happened from what it supposedly proves about us. Then we choose the next action based on what is true now, not on the identity we are afraid to lose.
Before asking someone to change course, examine the social price attached to the change.
Can they update without being humiliated?
Can they keep their dignity without keeping the bad decision?
Can the new choice feel like evidence of growth rather than proof of failure?
People become more open to change when a better decision does not require the destruction of the self-story that came before it.
Paul Larche is the author of The Divided Brain (CanReads 2026 Business/Marketing Winner | BookLife Prize 2025 Semifinalist, 10/10 Score, Editor’s Pick).