The four forces of progress: understand a stalled change
The four forces of progress are push, pull, anxiety, and habit. They give you four places to look when someone considers a change: what makes the current situation difficult, what makes an alternative appealing, and what makes leaving difficult.
Use this lens to explore a product switch, a new work process, or your own stalled intention. Begin with one person in one situation. “Why don’t people adopt our tool?” is too distant from any particular decision.
The Re-Wired Group explains these forces within Jobs to Be Done, a framework for understanding the progress people seek in particular circumstances. Its guide recommends learning from people who have already made a choice. Read the Re-Wired Group’s Jobs to Be Done guide.
What each force means
- Push: trouble with the current situation
- Something makes continuing as before less acceptable: a missed handoff, repeated work, or a new responsibility.
- Pull: an appealing possibility
- The person imagines a better outcome with the alternative. Describe that outcome in their terms.
- Anxiety: uncertainty about the change
- The new approach creates concerns: learning effort, losing information, or discovering that it does not fit.
- Habit: reasons to stay with the familiar
- The current approach may be awkward yet known, convenient, or connected to routines the person values.
These definitions summarize the Re-Wired Group’s explanation of the forces involved in a change. Our example and prompts below show one way to apply them without treating guesses as findings.
A worked example: replacing a shared spreadsheet
Hypothetical situation: a project coordinator recently moved one team from a shared spreadsheet to a task board. You want to understand that decision before proposing the board to another team.
Imagine your notes contain the following details. The evidence labels apply only within this invented scenario; these are not findings from actual customer interviews.
| Force | Evidence or assumption | Follow-up question |
|---|---|---|
| Push | Reported event: two people worked on the same task after missing a spreadsheet update. | What happened immediately after you discovered the duplicate work? |
| Pull | Reported expectation: the coordinator hoped assignments would be easier to see. | What did you see or try that made the board seem promising? |
| Anxiety | Our assumption: the coordinator worried about losing older project notes. | What, if anything, made you hesitate before moving the project? |
| Habit | Reported routine: the team reviewed the spreadsheet together every Monday. | What happened to that Monday routine after the switch? |
The anxiety question leaves room for a different answer. Perhaps old notes were irrelevant and the real concern was having to maintain two systems. Asking “Were you worried about losing notes?” would put your explanation into the conversation.
Reconstruct the decision before proposing a fix
Ask the person to walk through the sequence: the first moment they considered a change, what they tried, what delayed them, and what finally happened. When an answer is broad, ask for a specific occasion.
“The old process was frustrating” needs a follow-up such as “Tell me about the last time that happened.” Keep their account separate from your interpretation. Leave a force blank if the conversation does not establish it.
For internal changes, the Re-Wired Group also recommends understanding the progress different affected people want, including their concerns and existing routines. Read its guide to introducing a new idea.
A four-box worksheet
Write the person, the old approach, the new approach, and the approximate decision date at the top of a page. Then use these prompts.
- Push: What event made the old approach difficult to continue?
- Pull: What did the person hope would be different?
- Anxiety: What gave them pause, and what did they do about it?
- Habit: What part of the old approach did they want to keep?
Beside each note, write “reported,” “observed,” or “assumed,” plus where it came from. Circle one important uncertainty. Make that your next conversation topic before changing the offer or process.
Use the map carefully
The categories organize an account; they do not calculate whether someone will switch. One interview does not establish how common a concern is. A reassuring conversation does not prove that a new routine will last.
For personal reflection, fill the boxes with your own experiences and choose a small next step. Treat that as a private exercise, not evidence about customers. When considering someone else’s decision, let them describe their circumstances. Staying with the current approach may be a reasonable choice.
In the spreadsheet example, a useful next experiment might preserve the Monday review while trying the board on one project. Only suggest that after checking whether continuity actually matters to the people involved.
Go deeper
Open Bob Moesta’s Jobs-to-be-Done interview in the library for the conversation behind this lens.