What Makes Change Sticky?

Let’s be honest. Change is hard.

If you’ve ever tried to get your team to adopt new software, follow a new process, or shift a long-standing mindset, you know the feeling.

The endless town halls. The flashy PowerPoint decks. The “strategic transformation roadmap” that got rolled out with great enthusiasm… only to fizzle out six months later.

So, the question isn’t how to launch change. That’s easy.

The real question is: What makes change stick?

The Myth of the One-Time Push

Many organisations treat the change like a broadcast.

You announce it. You explain it. You may even throw in a few incentives. Then, you sit back and wait for the magic to happen.

Except it doesn’t.

As Damon Centola, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “How Behavior Spreads”, discovered, change doesn’t move like information.

It doesn’t spread the way a meme goes viral or a new policy gets emailed. Instead, it spreads more like a social ritual. Slowly. Relationally. Through people, not memos.

Centola coined the term complex contagion to describe this.

Unlike “simple contagions” (like sneezes or tweets), complex contagions like using a new app, speaking up in meetings, or adopting a different leadership style require multiple trusted exposures before people are willing to act.

Let’s break that down.

Five Key Ingredients That Make Change Stick

According to Centola and a growing body of research, five things make behavioural change take root inside organisations:

1. Multiple Exposures

“People need to see a new behaviour repeatedly, and from different sources, before they start to believe it’s safe or credible.” – Centola (2018)

One exposure is never enough.

Imagine trying to get people to use a new digital tool. If they hear about it once at a company-wide meeting, nothing happens. But if they see their direct manager using it, a colleague using it to streamline reporting, and then it pops up in a success story shared at a team huddle, it begins to feel real.

This is why effective change requires more than a one-time rollout. It needs ongoing reinforcement from different sources.

2. Trusted Messengers

“The messenger matters more than the message.” – Centola (2021, TEDx)

People copy people they trust, not necessarily people with the biggest titles, but people with credibility in their day-to-day lives.

This includes informal leaders, peer influencers, and team members others naturally look to when navigating uncertainty.

It flips traditional change communication on its head.

Instead of focusing on who’s in charge, organisations should focus on who’s influential, and build change efforts around them.

3. Strong Ties and Social Networks

“Change spreads more reliably through close, high-trust relationships than through broad, weak ties.” – Rogers (2003)

Strong ties, the close relationships we rely on for feedback, support, and collaboration, are the primary channels through which change travels.

That’s why big company-wide emails rarely move the needle, but a 1:1 conversation with a respected teammate can shift your entire mindset.

These social networks are the real infrastructure of change. They’re invisible to most org charts, but they determine what gets adopted on the ground.

4. Visible Behavior

“Seeing is believing. Talking about change doesn’t convince people. Watching it happen does.” – Grant (2016)

People are visual learners, not just in terms of charts and diagrams, but in watching what their peers do.

If someone talks about values but doesn’t model them, trust erodes. If a leader praises innovation but punishes experimentation, culture shuts down.

That’s why visible, consistent behaviour is critical. People must see the new way of working, not just hear about it. Ideally, they need to see it in action from multiple sources.

5. Reinforcement Over Time

“Change doesn’t happen in a single wave. It needs to be repeated, supported, and sustained.” – Heath & Heath (2010)

Even if you get all the above right, if you only do it once, it fades.

Real change becomes sticky when it’s reinforced over time through rituals, habits, routines, check-ins, and storytelling. Like brushing teeth, culture change only works if it becomes part of daily life.

Sticky Change in Action: A Few Noteworthy Examples

Let’s examine some real-world cases where change became sticky and why.

1. The Cleveland Clinic’s Culture Transformation

In the early 2000s, the Cleveland Clinic (one of the world’s top hospitals) was battling an internal crisis. Patient satisfaction scores were plummeting. People loved the medical care but felt dismissed, rushed, and unheard by the staff.

Instead of sending out another customer service memo, CEO Delos Cosgrove focused on visible behaviour and trusted messengers.

He began by training and empowering peer influencers, nurses, orderlies, and admin staff, to model empathy and listening in daily interactions.

They also created rituals like starting every team meeting with a patient story and celebrating small acts of kindness.

Slowly, the behaviour shifted. As empathy became visible and repeatable, it also became expected and eventually, normal.

The result?

A dramatic improvement in patient satisfaction and employee engagement over five years.

2. Microsoft’s Mindset Shift Under Satya Nadella

When Satya Nadella took over as Microsoft CEO in 2014, the company had a toxic internal competition culture that had become bureaucratic and stagnant.

But Nadella didn’t issue just another “transformation memo.” He focused on changing behaviour, not slogans.

He championed a growth mindset, not just by talking about it but also by showing vulnerability, asking more questions, and rewarding experimentation.

More importantly, he built strong networks of trusted leaders who could model and reinforce these values daily.

The result?

A renewed innovation culture, employee enthusiasm, and a $2 trillion rebound in company valuation over less than a decade.

3. UNICEF’s Digital Transformation

UNICEF, the global humanitarian organisation, needed to adopt a new digital-first way of working. But getting thousands of field workers to embrace cloud-based platforms and real-time dashboards wasn’t a simple announcement task.

Instead, they identified local digital champions in each region, people who were already respected, and let them model the behaviour. They also incentivised small wins, spotlighting success stories from the field.

By focusing on trusted networks, reinforcement, and visible behaviour (instead of just top-down training), they accelerated adoption and were successful even in regions traditionally resistant to change.

What Should Organizations Focus On?

If you’re serious about making change stick, here’s what your organisation should be doing beyond the “change decks” and kick-off webinars:

1. Map Your Social Networks

Forget the org chart. Ask: Who do people listen to? Who do they go to for advice, support, or clarity? Identify these informal influencers and equip them to carry the change forward.

2. Make Behaviour Visible

Design for visibility. Hold public retrospectives.

Let leaders model behaviours on the shop floor or in stand-ups. Feature peer-to-peer spotlights on the intranet.

Change spreads best when people can see it, not just hear about it.

3. Reinforce Change Over Time

Treat change like a gym membership, not a resolution.

Embed reinforcement mechanisms into your culture: rituals, recognition systems, nudges, and team practices that reward consistency, not just compliance.

4. Invest in Trust

The currency of change is trust.

No transformation will stick if your culture is riddled with fear, blame, or inconsistency. Focus on psychological safety, transparency, and making it safe to try, fail, and learn.

5. Start Small, Then Scale

Don’t try to boil the ocean.

Start with a team, a function, or a pilot project. Get it right there. Make it visible. Then, let it spread organically through trusted ties, the way all real change does.

Conclusion

You don’t announce change. You grow it.

If there’s one takeaway from Damon Centola’s research, it’s this: change behaves more like a social movement than a software update.

You don’t just click “install” and wait. You cultivate it through people, networks, trust, and behaviour.

So, the next time you plan a change initiative, resist the urge to start with a memo. Start by asking:

1. Who do people trust?

2. What behaviours do we want to make visible?

3. How can we reinforce this every week?

Until next time, remember that what makes change sticky isn’t what you say, it’s what people see, repeat, and believe together.

Dion Le Roux

References

1. Centola, D. (2018). How Behavior Spreads: The Science of Complex Contagions. Princeton University Press.

2. Centola, D. (2021). TEDx Talk: How to Change Human Behavior

3. Grant, A. (2016). Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World. Viking.

4. Heath, C., & Heath, D. (2010). Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. Crown Business.

5. Rogers, E. M. (2003). Diffusion of Innovations (5th ed.). Free Press.

6. Sinek, S. (2009). Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. Portfolio.