The Stepping-Up Process

Definition

Ibarra rejects the "conversion experience" model of change (a single moment after which nothing is the same) in favor of a five-stage process: disconfirmation (feeling the gap between where you are and where you want to be), simple addition (taking on new behaviors without dropping old ones, banking quick wins), complication (backsliding and exhaustion as old and new roles compete for time, with your environment pulling you back to your old self), course correction (reflecting on the accumulated experience to revise your goals — "bringing the outsight back in"), and internalization (changes that finally stick because they express who you've become, not who you're forcing yourself to be).

In the Book

Chapter 5 opens by rejecting the Saul-to-Paul conversion archetype in favor of Ulysses's long, wandering voyage home. Ibarra illustrates the process with George, a bored manufacturing engineer assigned to a two-year reengineering project: he found the training abstract and confusing at first, made sense of it by seeking out conferences and an external community of fellow process-reengineers, gradually came to see himself as a systems thinker, and by the end had no desire to return to his old group — a transformation "his prior functional perspective" could never have predicted from the start. Ibarra contrasts a recipe (following known steps to a known, achievable output) with becoming a great chef (conditions that raise the odds of a good outcome without guaranteeing it, because the process changes who you are). Executives leaving her course typically "add before they subtract," get busy, get sidetracked, and only some persist long enough to reach course correction and internalization — the framework's purpose is to normalize the backsliding stage so people don't mistake it for failure.

Why It Matters

Most change frameworks measure progress against a known target (A to a known B) and treat any regression as a problem to fix. This model explains why that yardstick misleads during identity-level change: B is genuinely unknown and shifts as you approach it, so backsliding and confusion in the "complication" stage are structurally expected, not signs the plan failed. That reframing is useful in any domain where the destination is only clarified by the journey — a career move, an organizational transformation, a creative practice — because it turns floundering from a stop signal into a stage.