Knack 4 Business

The Hidden Cost of Resisting Change | What's Beneath the Surface

Episode Summary

Organizational coach Paige Harazin-Masi on why change stalls, what leaders miss, and how to build a team that actually adapts.

Episode Notes

GROWTH PILLAR: Leadership & Ops

WHO THIS IS FOR: SMB owners / Solopreneurs / Team leads / Leaders managing growth or transition

WHAT THEY'LL GAIN: A practical lens on why change fails, how the brain responds to threat, and what real change fitness looks like inside a team or organization.

Most leaders know change is coming. What they miss is what is happening underneath, inside their people, their teams, and their own thinking.

Paige Harazin-Masi is an organizational consultant and executive coach who spent years inside Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, and several high-growth startups before becoming a team of one. She now helps senior leaders figure out what is really going on inside their organizations — and what to actually do about it.

In this episode, Paige breaks down the SCARF framework — status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness — and explains why these five threat triggers cause people to freeze, resist, and disengage during change. She makes the case for change fitness over change management: treating adaptability as an ongoing practice rather than a project with a finish line.

She and Bernie dig into what it looks like when a company is thriving ten years after building a real learning culture, how leaders accidentally create analysis paralysis, and why the most senior people in a room are often the last to hear the truth.

Key topics covered:

• Why the brain treats uncertainty as a threat — and what that does to your team
• The SCARF framework and how each trigger shows up at work
• Change fitness vs. change management — why one lasts and one doesn't
• The iceberg model — what leaders see vs. what is actually driving behavior
• How to communicate change across a small team and a large organization
• What good looks like for a company with a real learning orientation
• When to call in outside help — and what the early warning signs look like

Connect with Paige:
Paige Harazin-Masi — LinkedIn
partnerwithpaige.com — Website
Media & Resources — Media page
Free Organizational Health Assessment — 20-question self-guided tool based on the McKinsey Organizational Health Index
Free 45-minute coaching session this month — email paige@partnerwithpaige.com or visit her website to book

Referenced in this episode:

• Greg Harden — performance coach, University of Michigan. Author of Stay Sane in an Insane World. [Greg Harden](https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-harden-b5a9a humble/)
• SCARF Framework — Neuroleadership Institute
• McKinsey Organizational Health Index

Browse all episodes — K4B / ETW / CGN past episodes

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