“Everything works_. For about six weeks._” That’s a favourite of Dan John’s when it comes to exercise programming for a fitness adaptation.

I’n starting to wonder how it applies at different scales, though. A novel stimuli catalyses change in an individual for six weeks; what about a trio for 12 weeks, a two-pizza team for 24 weeks, a whole department for 48 weeks, an organisation for approximately two years?

Reactivity to change is a complex phenomena. There’s decisions and posturing prior to the change, there’s the introduction and adoption of the change itself, channels for diffusion to consider, laws of diminishing returns and supercompensation, the political and cultural and sociotechnical dynamics to consider. Yet there is likely to be a coarse heuristic that captures the fundamental dynamics in a few words.

I’ll keep looking for it. But in the meantime I’ll keep this variant to hand; everything works, for a while.