Modern CTO: Tech Titans — A Masterclass in Change Management with Ashley Goodall

Date: March 16, 2026
Host: Joel Beasley, ProSeries Media
Guest: Ashley Goodall
Theme: A deep dive into the challenges and psychology of organizational change, and how leaders and teams can better navigate—and humanize—the process.

Episode Overview

In this compelling episode of Modern CTO, Joel Beasley engages with Ashley Goodall, author and change management expert, to challenge conventional wisdom about change in organizations. Together, they examine why relentless change often leads to burnout, learned helplessness, and disengagement—and explore how we can foster improvement without inflicting harm. Goodall emphasizes the nuanced difference between “change for change’s sake” and genuine progress that speaks to our core human needs.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Rethinking the “Change is Good” Narrative

• Change as a Management Doctrine:
  • Goodall describes how business schools and corporate cultures often define leadership as “making change.”
    • “If you look at the experience of being on the receiving end of change, it's a very, very different set of experiences and circumstances and psychological reality ... too much change harms people.” (Ashley Goodall, 01:13)
• The Dichotomy:
  • There’s tension between management’s imperative to create change and the often negative, exhausting experience for teams.
  • “Too much change makes it really hard for people to actually do their jobs. It’s not just, you know, people don’t like it, it’s ‘this makes it hard to do my job.’” (Ashley Goodall, 01:47)

2. Change vs. Improvement: The Real Target

• Improvement as the Goal:
  • Not all change is improvement, but all improvement requires some change.
  • The workplace is too often “in the blender”—constant, random change that leaves people burned out and “soul crushed.”
  • “No one wants to play C sharp for 15 minutes in a row ... but at the same time, a song that’s a fusillade of random notes ... wears people down.” (Ashley Goodall, 03:55)
• Control and Rhythm:
  • Employees need a stable framework (the “jazz standard”) within which they improvise, rather than enduring discordant, unrelenting changes.

3. The Psychology of Change: Helplessness and Motivation

• Loss of Aim and Motivation:
  • If people have no say in shifting objectives, they quickly become demoralized and disengaged.
  • “What is the right word? Demoralized. I don’t know if that’s the right word. But you will lose motivation and interest ... you feel like there’s no winning.” (Joel Beasley, 06:20)
• Learned Helplessness:
  • Rooted in psychological studies from the 1970s—if people feel nothing they do makes a difference, they “phone it in”.
  • “If you teach a creature that nothing it does can make any difference, it quits trying.” (Ashley Goodall, 06:51)
  • Real-world parallels: “quiet quitting”, “lazy girl jobs”, “coffee badging”, and “the Great Resignation”.

4. The Five Problems of Change

Ashley Goodall presents five recurring psychological challenges in the face of organizational change (09:37–13:54):

1. Uncertainty:

   • Ambiguity before and during change is acutely stressful—even physiologically damaging.
   • “Uncertainty is very hard on, on humans ... it causes increased mortality. So uncertainty is a ... we don’t want uncertainty. Uncertainty bad.” (Ashley Goodall, 10:14)

2. Lack of Control (Learned Helplessness):

   • When change is imposed, not chosen, people lose their sense of agency.

3. Unbelonging:

   • Social bonds are disrupted by org changes, leading to loss of psychological support.

4. Displacement:

   • Rituals and attachments to “place” (physical or group) are broken, disrupting routines and context.

5. Loss of Meaning:

   • If the organization’s purpose keeps shifting (or becomes incoherent), people are cut off from deeper engagement.
   • “The first meaning of meaning is actually whether stuff makes sense or not. And it can’t be aspirational if none of the parts make any sense at all.” (Ashley Goodall, 12:54)

5. Naming the Problems: First Step to Solutions

• Identifying Issues Empowers Action:
  • “Once we name them and can discuss them, we can overcome them and provide the antidote and move forward.” (Joel Beasley, 14:19)
• Valuing What’s Lost:
  • Goodall urges honoring the opposite of each problem: certainty, control, belonging, place, and meaning.

6. Understanding Motivation: The “Extrinsic Incentives Bias” (15:18–20:50)

• Chip Heath’s Research:
  • We rate our own motivations as intrinsically noble, but see others—especially those less familiar—as motivated primarily by money or status.
  • This bias leads leaders to misunderstand employee engagement and misapply incentives.
  • “If you ask us about our own, if you ask us to rank our own incentives, we will put all the intrinsic ones at the top of the list ... but if you then say, great, what do you think motivates those people over there?... The greater the distance, the more extrinsic we assume their incentives are.” (Ashley Goodall, 15:24)
  • Coin-operated fallacy: Seeing employees as solely motivated by financial incentives discounts what really sustains engagement.
• Limits of Compensation:
  • Raises only motivate in the short term. Once basic financial needs are met, purpose and meaning outweigh further pay in affecting performance.
  • “If you think that you can pay them 300k and that they will work harder … Give it three months and their productivity is going to be about what it was before.” (Joel Beasley, 18:36)
  • “There’s not much headroom left. ... This is silliness.” (Ashley Goodall, 19:26–19:41)

Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “Change is slightly the wrong term for what we’re after. What we really want is a thing called improvement.” (Ashley Goodall, 02:47)
• “To be living life in the blender. And it’s really hard on people.” (Ashley Goodall, 03:34)
• “What happens to me? Sooner or later, the answer is you learn that nothing you do makes any difference at all to anything. At which point, you phone it in.” (Ashley Goodall, 07:34)
• “Things can’t cohere into a beautiful picture until they cohere into a picture.” (Ashley Goodall, 12:32)

Important Timestamps

• 00:35 — Why “leaders create change” is flawed
• 02:47 — Difference between ‘change’ and ‘improvement’
• 06:47 — Learned helplessness, quiet quitting, the Great Resignation
• 09:37 — The Five Problems of Change
• 14:19 — Moving toward solutions by naming issues
• 15:18 — The extrinsic incentives bias
• 19:26 — Limits of financial incentives

Tone and Final Reflections

The conversation is thoughtful, clear-eyed, and at times wry—balancing scientific insight with real-world pragmatism. Goodall and Beasley challenge listeners to humanize organizational change, seeing people not as “coin-operated” automatons, but as social, purposeful beings who need meaning, control, and connection.

For Listeners

Anyone managing—or being managed through—change will find practical wisdom here. Goodall’s “change management” isn’t about new frameworks, but about returning humanity and sense-making to leadership.
If you enjoyed this episode, consider sharing it with someone navigating organizational turbulence or interested in making work better for everyone.