Lunch & Learn | Why Your Change Initiative Is Failing Before It Starts
Seventy percent of organizational change initiatives fail—and most project managers are taught to look at the plan, timeline, or budget when things go wrong.
The real culprit is almost always the human system no one mapped.
In this session, Chrissie Bettencourt draws on decades of “boots on the ground” experience leading complex change across organizations to introduce a Human Systems Architecture approach to project change management.
Before a single new tool is deployed or a process is redesigned, project leaders must first understand the:
- Informal power structures
- Emotional contracts
- Biological threat responses
already operating within their teams.
Attendees will learn how to conduct a rapid “human architecture” diagnostic before a change initiative launches, how to identify the hidden influencers and resistors that no org chart will show them, and how to use empathy and alignment — not authority — to build the conditions for genuine adoption.
Drawing on emerging applied behavioural neuroscience, the session will reveal why people resist change at a biological level and what project leaders can do before resistance becomes a project risk.
Participants will leave with a practical framework they can apply to their very next project.
Learning Outcomes
1. Understand why people resist change at a biological level
Participants will learn how the brain’s threat response — loss aversion, entrenched habits and the amygdala — derails change before traditional models even begin, and why this makes resistance a predictable project risk rather than a people problem.
2. Run a rapid “human architecture” diagnostic before launch
Participants will map the human system behind any project by identifying the informal influencers, emotional contracts, and perceived threats that no org chart shows.
3. Apply two proven techniques to calm the threat response
Participants will learn how to use:
- Radical clarity — naming what is changing, why, when, and what is not changing
- Autonomy — giving teams real choices in how the work gets done to reduce resistance.
4. They’ll also leave with a fillable planner they can use on their very next project.
Chrissie Bettencourt is the CEO of Potentia Path and a Human Systems Architect who helps organizations make change stick.
With decades of hands-on experience leading organizational change and building distributed teams, she designs the communication and leadership structures that help turn resistance into adoption.
A former college educator at St. Lawrence College in Kingston and a Fractional Executive, Chrissie’s work bridges:
- Neuroplasticity
- Leadership
- Organizational Design
She is currently integrating applied behavioural neuroscience into her change management work, addressing resistance where it starts: in the brain’s threat response.
