Available March 19, 2026

Episode 018: The Organizational Immune System — When Culture Attacks What It Doesn’t Recognize

DURATION: 53 minutes
HOST: Kevin Novak with James Eliott, CEO of the James Elliott and Company, Inc.
SHOW: The Human Factor Podcast

COLD OPEN

KEVIN: Your body has an immune system that protects you from foreign invaders. Bacteria, viruses, anything your body doesn’t recognize gets attacked and neutralized. It’s an extraordinary defense mechanism that keeps you alive. But here’s something that most leaders never consider: your organization has an immune system too. And it works exactly the same way.

KEVIN: When you introduce a new technology platform, a restructured workflow, or a different way of making decisions, you’re introducing something foreign into the organizational body. And just like your biological immune system, the organizational immune system doesn’t evaluate whether that foreign element is helpful or harmful. It simply recognizes that it’s different and mobilizes to reject it.

KEVIN: This is why a new project, a new way of doing work, and an organizational transformation initiative can have executive sponsorship, a solid business case, and a technically superior solution and still fail. The organizational culture identifies it as foreign and deploys antibodies in the form of passive resistance, procedural delays, and cultural narratives that neutralize the change before it can take hold.

KEVIN: I’m Kevin Novak, CEO of 2040 Digital, Professor at the University of Maryland, and author of The Truth About Transformation: Leading in the Age of AI, Uncertainty and Human Complexity, along with the Ideas and Innovations weekly newsletter.

KEVIN: Welcome to The Human Factor Podcast. The show that explores the intersection of humanity, technology, and transformation, along with the psychology behind transformation success.

Today, we’re exploring the organizational immune system, the invisible cultural defense mechanism that kills more transformations than bad technology ever could. And I’m joined by James Eliott, CEO of James Eliott and Company, who has spent over 30 years working with hundreds of organizations navigating exactly this phenomenon.

INTRODUCTION

KEVIN: This is Season 2, Episode 5, and if you’ve been following this season, you know we’ve been building toward something. In Episode 1, we explored the identity crisis that transformation triggers, how change threatens people’s professional sense of self. Episode 2 with Elizabeth Stewart examined emotional contagion, how anxiety and resistance spread through organizations like a virus. Episode 3 unpacked the structural traps of middle management, the organizational designs that inadvertently block change. And Episode 4 looked at algorithmic mirrors, how AI systems reflect and amplify existing cultural patterns.

KEVIN: Today, we’re pulling these threads together into a unified framework. The organizational immune system is where identity protection, emotional contagion, structural rigidity, and cultural pattern recognition converge. It’s the meta-system that explains why organizations resist change at a fundamental level, even when every individual in the organization says they want it.

KEVIN: And this concept has deep roots in organizational psychology. Edgar Schein, who many consider the father of organizational culture research, identified three levels of culture that operate in every organization: artifacts, espoused values, and basic underlying assumptions. That third level, the assumptions that are so deeply embedded that people don’t even know they hold them, is where the immune system lives. And that’s where we’re going today.

KEVIN: But before I get into the research, I want to bring in someone who has seen this immune response play out across hundreds of organizations over three decades. Jim, welcome to The Human Factor Podcast.

KEVIN (Question for James): Jim, before we get into the theory, I’d love for our audience to hear from your experience. In 30 years of working with organizations through change, when did you first recognize that something systemic was fighting back against transformation efforts, something beyond just individual resistance?

JAMES: [JAMES RESPONDS]

SEGMENT 1: THE SCIENCE OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

Edgar Schein’s Three Levels of Culture

KEVIN: Jim, that’s a great foundation. Let me build on what you’re describing with the research framework that explains exactly why this happens.

KEVIN: Edgar Schein’s work at MIT, spanning from the 1980s through his most recent publications, established that organizational culture operates on three distinct levels, and understanding these levels is critical to understanding why organizations reject change the way a body rejects a transplanted organ.

KEVIN: The first level is artifacts. These are the visible, tangible elements of culture: the office layout, the dress code, the technology platforms people use, the organizational chart, and the way meetings are structured. Artifacts are easy to observe but difficult to interpret because the same artifact can mean completely different things in different cultural contexts. An open office plan might signal collaboration in one organization and surveillance in another.

KEVIN: The second level is espoused values. These are the strategies, goals, and philosophies that leadership articulates. The company’s mission statement states a commitment to innovation, the formal values printed on the wall. Espoused values represent what the organization says it believes, and they’re often where transformation initiatives are framed. Leadership announces that we value agility, or we’re committed to digital transformation, and these become the espoused values driving the change effort.

KEVIN: The third level, and this is where the immune system resides, is the basic underlying assumptions. These are the unconscious, taken-for-granted beliefs that actually govern behavior. They’re so deeply embedded that people don’t question them and often can’t articulate them. Schein described them as the ultimate source of values and action within a culture. They’re invisible to the people who hold them, which is precisely what makes them so powerful as a resistance mechanism.

KEVIN: Here’s the critical insight from Schein’s research: when a change initiative aligns with artifacts and espoused values but conflicts with basic underlying assumptions, the assumptions win every time. Every time. You can redesign the office, update the mission statement, and deploy new technology, and the underlying assumptions will reassert themselves through behaviors that no one consciously chooses, but everyone unconsciously enacts.

KEVIN (Question for James): Jim, in your work with hundreds of companies, how have you seen this play out? Can you give us an example where the espoused values said one thing but the underlying assumptions drove completely different behavior during a transformation?

JAMES: [JAMES RESPONDS]

SEGMENT 2: HOW THE IMMUNE SYSTEM ACTIVATES

Cultural Antibodies and the Rejection Response

KEVIN: What Jim is describing maps precisely to what we can think of as the organizational immune response. Let me walk through how this activation works, because it follows a remarkably consistent pattern across different industries and transformation types.

KEVIN: Research in organizational behavior, including foundational work by scholars like Karl Weick on sensemaking and Amy Edmondson on psychological safety, shows that when a change initiative enters an organization, it goes through what I call the cultural recognition process. The organization’s embedded assumptions essentially scan the incoming change and ask: Is this consistent with who we are?

KEVIN: If the change aligns with the basic underlying assumptions, it gets adopted relatively smoothly. This is why some changes feel effortless while others meet fierce resistance. It’s not about the quality of the change or even the quality of the change management. It’s about whether the cultural immune system recognizes the change as self or foreign.

KEVIN: When the immune system identifies something as foreign, it deploys what I call cultural antibodies. These are organizational behaviors that function to neutralize the perceived threat. And they come in several distinct forms.

KEVIN: The first antibody type is narrative neutralization. The organization generates stories and explanations for why the change won’t work here. ‘We tried something like that before, and it failed.’ ‘That might work in tech companies, but our industry is different.’ ‘The people proposing this don’t understand how things really work.’ These narratives aren’t manufactured by a few resistors. They emerge organically from the culture because the underlying assumptions need a conscious explanation for the discomfort people feel.

KEVIN: The second antibody type is procedural absorption. The organization doesn’t reject the change outright. Instead, it absorbs it into existing processes until it’s unrecognizable. The new agile methodology gets implemented, but wrapped in so many existing approval processes that it functions exactly like the waterfall approach it was supposed to replace. The new collaboration platform gets adopted but used in exactly the same siloed way as the old email system. The change is technically present but functionally neutralized.

KEVIN: The third antibody type is selective adoption. The organization adopts the parts of the change that align with existing assumptions and quietly drops the parts that don’t. A customer-centricity initiative gets enthusiastic adoption of new CRM tools, but the underlying assumption that internal expertise matters more than customer feedback remains untouched. The artifacts change. The assumptions don’t.

KEVIN: And the fourth antibody type is champion isolation. When individuals genuinely embrace the change and begin working differently, the organizational immune system isolates them. They get labeled as outliers, idealists, or people who don’t understand the real constraints. Their success gets attributed to unique circumstances rather than the merit of the new approach. The culture protects itself by ensuring that successful adoption doesn’t spread.

KEVIN (Question for James): Jim, which of these antibody types do you see most frequently in your consulting work? And are there organizations that are particularly susceptible to one type over another?

JAMES: [JAMES RESPONDS]

SEGMENT 3: DIAGNOSING THE IMMUNE RESPONSE

Making the Invisible Visible

KEVIN: Lets make the invisible visible. This is where measurement becomes critical, and it connects directly to what we discussed in Season 1, Episode 10 on measuring the human factor.

KEVIN: The challenge with the organizational immune system is that it operates below the level of conscious awareness. People don’t wake up in the morning and decide to deploy cultural antibodies. These responses emerge from the collective enactment of shared assumptions that nobody can see. So how do you diagnose something invisible?

KEVIN: The answer is that you look for the behavioral signatures that immune activation leaves behind. Research on organizational resistance, including work by Jeffrey Ford and Laurie Ford published in the Harvard Business Review, suggests that resistance is actually a form of engagement, not disengagement. People resist because they care about the organization, and the immune response is the organization caring about its own survival.

KEVIN: At 2040 Digital, we look for several diagnostic indicators. First, we examine the gap between espoused support and behavioral adoption. As we discussed in Season 1, stated support for transformation typically runs 40 to 50 percentage points ahead of actual behavior change. But the pattern of that gap tells you which assumptions are being violated. If adoption is high for technology tools but low for new decision-making processes, the immune system is protecting assumptions about authority and expertise rather than assumptions about technology.

KEVIN: Second, we track narrative patterns. What stories are people telling about the transformation? Stories that begin with ‘that’s great in theory, but’ or ‘what leadership doesn’t understand is’ are diagnostic of which underlying assumptions are being threatened. The content of the resistance narrative reveals the content of the underlying assumptions.

KEVIN: Third, we look at where workarounds emerge. Workarounds are the most reliable behavioral indicator of immune activation because they show you exactly where the new approach conflicts with deeply held assumptions. If people are finding ways to maintain old approval hierarchies within a new flat decision-making structure, the immune system is protecting assumptions about how authority should work.

KEVIN: Fourth, we examine social network changes. When transformation begins, do informal networks reorganize around old versus new approaches? Do early adopters become isolated from their peer groups? These network dynamics reveal the immune system’s champion isolation response in real time.

KEVIN (Question for James): Jim, when you’re brought into an organization that’s struggling with a transformation, what are the first diagnostic signals you look for? How do you determine whether you’re dealing with an immune response versus other types of implementation challenges?

JAMES: [JAMES RESPONDS]

SEGMENT 4: WORKING WITH THE IMMUNE SYSTEM

From Fighting Culture to Partnering With It

KEVIN: This brings us to what I think is the most important insight about the organizational immune system: you cannot defeat it. If you try to overpower cultural resistance through mandate, you trigger a stronger immune response. If you try to bypass it through stealth implementation, it eventually catches up. The only sustainable approach is to work with the immune system rather than against it.

KEVIN: And this is where Schein’s work becomes practically actionable. He argued that culture change doesn’t happen by attacking existing assumptions. It happens by creating conditions where new assumptions can develop alongside existing ones until the new assumptions prove more useful for solving the problems the organization actually faces.

KEVIN: In practice, this means several things. First, you need to make the immune system visible before you trigger it. This is the diagnostic work we discussed. Before launching a transformation, map the basic underlying assumptions that the change will challenge. If you’re implementing a collaborative decision-making platform in an organization that deeply assumes decisions should come from experts, you need to know that before day one, not discover it at month six when adoption has stalled.

KEVIN: Second, you need to introduce change in ways the immune system recognizes as compatible. Instead of framing a new technology as replacing the old way of working, frame it as enhancing the things the culture already values. If the organization’s underlying assumption is that individual expertise matters most, show how the new tool amplifies individual expertise rather than threatening it. You’re essentially coating the transplant in proteins that the immune system recognizes as self.

KEVIN: Third, you need to build psychological safety for assumption testing. This connects back to Season 2, Episode 1 on identity crisis. People need to feel safe enough to examine their own assumptions, try new behaviors, and acknowledge when old approaches aren’t working. Without psychological safety, the immune system has no mechanism for updating its recognition patterns.

KEVIN: Fourth, use early adopters as bridges, not outliers. Instead of letting the immune system isolate people who embrace the change, design structures that make early adopters connectors between old and new approaches. Pair them with respected members of the existing culture so that adoption spreads through trusted relationships rather than being perceived as an invasion from outside.

KEVIN: And fifth, measure assumption shift, not just behavior change. The transformation isn’t complete when people use the new system. It’s complete when the underlying assumptions have evolved to make the new behaviors feel natural rather than forced. This is the difference between compliance and culture change, and it’s the difference between transformations that stick and those that regress the moment leadership attention moves elsewhere.

KEVIN (Question for James): Jim, in your experience working with organizations for over 30 years, what approaches have you found most effective for actually changing those deep underlying assumptions rather than just changing surface behaviors? What separates organizations that achieve genuine culture shift from those that achieve temporary compliance?

JAMES: [JAMES RESPONDS]

SEGMENT 5: CONNECTING THE SEASON 2 ARC

The Unified Framework

KEVIN: Before we close, I want to connect today’s conversation back to the full Season 2 arc, because the organizational immune system is really the unifying framework for everything we’ve explored this season.

KEVIN: The identity crisis we discussed in Episode 1 is the immune system activating at the individual level. When transformation threatens someone’s professional identity, their personal immune response generates protective behaviors that look like resistance but are really self-preservation. Emotional contagion from Episode 2 is the transmission mechanism, the way individual immune responses spread through the organizational body until they become collective. The structural traps from Episode 3 are the institutional immune responses, the organizational designs and processes that have evolved specifically to maintain the status quo. And the algorithmic mirrors from Episode 4 show how technology can either reinforce existing immune patterns or, if designed thoughtfully, help organizations see their own assumptions more clearly.

KEVIN: The organizational immune system is the meta-pattern that connects all of these. It’s the system that coordinates identity protection, emotional contagion, structural rigidity, and cultural pattern recognition into a unified defense against change. And understanding it as a system rather than a collection of individual problems is what makes it possible to design transformation approaches that actually work.

KEVIN (Question for James): Jim, as someone who works with organizations through these challenges every day, what are the things you wish more leaders understood about organizational culture and its resistance to change?

JAMES: [JAMES RESPONDS]

CLOSING

KEVIN: Jim, thank you so much for joining us today. Your three decades of experience working with hundreds of organizations bring a depth of practical insight that makes this research come alive for our audience.

KEVIN: The organizational immune system isn’t your enemy. It’s the mechanism your culture uses to maintain coherence and stability. The problem isn’t that the immune system exists. The problem is that most transformation approaches trigger it unnecessarily by ignoring the deep cultural assumptions that Schein identified decades ago.

KEVIN: When you understand that culture operates on three levels, and that the deepest level of basic underlying assumptions is where resistance truly lives, you can design transformation approaches that work with human psychology rather than against it. You can introduce change in ways that the culture recognizes as compatible. You can build the psychological safety necessary for assumption testing. And you can measure whether a genuine culture shift is occurring rather than just tracking compliance metrics that mask the real picture.

In our next episode, we’re looking at one of the most powerful antibodies in the organizational immune system we discussed today: silence. Not the kind of silence that comes from having nothing to say. The kind that comes from having learned, through years of subtle reinforcement, that saying something carries more risk than staying quiet. The data shows that one in three employees who know about problems in their organization never report them, and nearly half of those who do speak up face retaliation. Your organization says it wants candor. But what is it actually teaching people to do? Tune in to find out.

KEVIN: If you found today’s episode valuable, here’s how you can explore these concepts further. Subscribe to The Human Factor Podcast wherever you watch or listen to podcasts, leave a rating, and a comment. Share this episode with your leadership team because understanding the immune system is the first step to working with it rather than fighting it.

KEVIN: And if you want weekly insights about transformation psychology, organizational behavior, and the human factors that determine transformation success, subscribe to my Ideas and Innovations newsletter on 2040 Digital’s website or on Substack. Every week I share practical frameworks and research on why change succeeds or fails. And connect with me on LinkedIn as well. I post regularly about the psychology of transformation, and I love hearing from listeners about their own experiences with organizational immune responses.

KEVIN: Until next time, remember: your organization’s culture isn’t resisting change to be difficult. It’s protecting what it knows. The question isn’t how to defeat that protection. It’s how to help the culture evolve its definition of what it needs to protect.

KEVIN: This is The Human Factor Podcast. I’m Kevin Novak. Thanks for watching or listening.

 

END OF EPISODE

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Upcoming: Episode 019: STRUCTURAL SILENCE – WHY ORGANIZATIONS TRAIN PEOPLE NOT TO SPEAK

We’re exploring structural silence, the invisible system that trains people not to speak, and why it may be the single most dangerous force operating inside your organization right now.

Season 2 Launched on February 20, 2026

More Episodes Coming Soon

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