The Power of 66

We love to believe that if we design a new process, build a new structure, or roll out a new operating model, the organization will simply shift. As if change installs itself. As if people will wake up tomorrow and behave differently because the slide deck told them to.

But humans don’t work that way. And organizations are just humans at scale.

The Power of 66 is the reminder that it takes the average person sixty‑six repetitions to build a new habit. Not sixty‑six days. Sixty‑six instances. Sixty‑six moments of doing the new thing instead of the old thing. Sixty‑six times choosing discipline over instinct. Sixty‑six times fighting the gravitational pull of what feels natural.

If you’ve ever changed your golf swing, you already know this truth. The first time you adjust your grip or alter your stance, everything feels wrong. The ball goes sideways. Your timing collapses. Your confidence dips. You start wondering why you ever tried to fix something that wasn’t broken.

But if you stay with it — if you keep swinging through the discomfort — something shifts. The new motion starts to settle. The muscles learn. The timing returns. And one day, without fanfare, the new swing becomes the natural one. You don’t even think about it anymore.

Organizational change is exactly the same. The first few weeks of a transformation always feel worse before they feel better. People revert. Systems resist. Leaders blink. The old habits fight back hard. And this is where most transformations die — not because the change was wrong, but because the reinforcement window was ignored.

The difference between making a change and installing a change is the Power of 66.

Installing a change means designing for the messy middle. It means building feedback loops, coaching routines, reinforcement rhythms, and adjustment cycles into the plan. It means expecting friction instead of being surprised by it. It means treating behaviour change as a practice, not an event.

The organizations that win aren’t the ones with the boldest vision. They’re the ones with the discipline to stay with the new swing long enough for it to become natural.

One of the quiet secrets of successful improvement is simple: bake the 66 into the plan. Make space for repetition. Make space for discomfort. Make space for the moment where everything feels worse before it gets better. That’s not failure — that’s the transformation doing exactly what transformations do.

If you want change to stick, you have to lead people through all sixty‑six swings.

That’s how you beat snapback. That’s how you build coherence. That’s how you transform for real.