A Great Idea Isn’t Enough for Successful Change

Why Change Fails — and What Neuroscience Reveals About Making It Work

Many organizations assume that if an idea is good enough — supported by data, metrics, and logic — people will naturally get on board.

But experience tells a different story.

In this on-demand webinar, Dr. Mark Jaben explores why even well-designed change initiatives struggle to gain traction — and what neuroscience reveals about how people actually respond to change.

Rather than viewing resistance as stubbornness or lack of engagement, this session reframes resistance as valuable information. By understanding how the brain forms opinions, protects deeply held beliefs, and defines “success,” leaders can approach change in a way that creates genuine buy-in instead of pushback.

Drawing on healthcare experience, Lean thinking, and brain science, this webinar offers practical insight for anyone responsible for leading change in complex organizations.

View all previous KaiNexus Continuous Improvement Webinars

What You’ll Learn

• Why data, metrics, and logic often fail to persuade people to change

• How the brain forms opinions before conscious reasoning takes place

• The difference between what works analytically and what feels workable to people

• Why resistance is a signal — not a barrier — to effective change

• How competing definitions of success lead to “dueling solutions”

• Practical ways to build trust, credibility, and openness during change

Key Insights

Successful change is not a one-time decision — it’s an ongoing process that unfolds through human interaction.

This webinar highlights how change efforts often stall because leaders focus on solving problems analytically while overlooking how people experience risk, loss, and uncertainty. When individuals feel that a proposed change threatens their ability to succeed — even subtly — resistance becomes a rational response, not an emotional one.

Rather than trying to convince or overpower resistance, effective leaders learn to work with it. By creating conditions of trust, curiosity, and shared purpose, change becomes something people are willing to invest energy in — not something they defend against.

Who This Webinar Is For

This session is especially valuable for:

• Executives and senior leaders driving organizational change

• Continuous improvement and Lean leaders

• Healthcare leaders navigating complex change initiatives

• Middle managers translating strategy into day-to-day practice

• Anyone experiencing resistance despite having “good ideas”

If you’ve ever wondered why change feels harder than it should — or why smart people push back against sensible improvements — this webinar will give you a new lens for understanding and addressing those challenges.

About the Presenter:

Mark Jaben is a residency trained, board certified Emergency Physician with over 25 years of clinical experience. After 20 years in a single hospital group, he has been doing independent emergency medicine practice for the past 7 years in the community setting in emergency departments ranging from 5000- 75,000 annual visits and has experience in hospitals, Indian Health Service facilities, office practices, and EMS services.

Mark's initial immersion into Lean came in 2008 while living and working in Taupo, New Zealand, where he had the opportunity to test Lean methodology while leading implementation efforts at the hospital there. After returning to the US, he continued to apply these concepts in emergency departments, hospitals, clinics, and regional collaborations, with a particular focus on how this can inform individual work. Observing the successes, as well as the trials and tribulations, led Mark to delve further into why this stuff works.

His recently released book, Free the Brain: Overcoming the Struggle People and Organizations Have With Change, takes a look at what neuroscience research says about how the brain operates and provides some real insight into why organizations do, or don’t, function so well.

In addition to supporting hospitals in their efforts to improve their delivery of quality patient care, his particular interests include the application of Lean principles to medical decision making and to individual work. He was included in A Factory of One, by Dan Markovitz, the 2012 Shingo prize winning book on this topic. Mark has written extensively about what it really takes to engage people in change efforts and has presented internationally on these topics. His experience includes EMR development and implementation, facility design, regional health delivery, and the interface between different hospital departments as well as between different organizations.