Over the last few months, I worked with a leadership team to develop and implement a change management program. We made good progress, but I noticed increasing nervousness within the team towards the execution stage.

I have seen this in a number of organizations and it stems from the realization that change, whether individual or organizational, inherently brings uncertainty.

The English writer D.H Lawrence once asked a very uncomfortable question in a poem titled Phoenix:

“Are you willing to be sponged out, erased, canceled, made nothing?”

Lawrence’s question is not just rhetorical. It is a challenge! His central idea is that true renewal requires the courage to let the old self collapse before something new can emerge.

Most of us like to believe we are open to change. But the kind of change we usually mean is incremental. Improve a little, adjust a little and polish what already exists.

Real change is something else entirely.

Real change often requires letting go of the very identity that brought us here, the beliefs we hold about ourselves, the roles we play, the status we enjoy, and the stories we have told ourselves for years.

That is why people defend outdated ideas, cling to familiar positions, and resist new ways of thinking even when the evidence is clear. The issue is rarely logic. It is identity.

The same dynamic plays out in organizations. Not because the change strategy is wrong, but because it requires leaders and teams to abandon ways of working that made them successful in the first place.

What is missed mostly is that processes, hierarchies, incentives, and even personal reputations are tied to the old model.

So, the organization does what individuals often do. It accepts the language of change but protects the old identity.

True transformation, however, requires passing through an uncomfortable phase where the old self no longer fits and the new one has not yet fully formed.

For organisations this can mean questioning long-held assumptions, letting go of legacy structures, and accepting a temporary period of uncertainty while a new way of operating takes shape.

It can feel like loss, like instability. It can even feel, as Lawrence put it, like being “erased.” Yet that is often the price of meaningful renewal.