Why people resist the change they ask for: Lessons from the Madina-Adenta pedestrian overpasses

By Mildred Akpene AMUZU

The lesson from the Madina-Adenta overpasses is not that people reject safety; it is that change succeeds only when design, incentives and enforcement work together.

People often resist changes they originally asked for, not because they oppose the idea but because adopting it becomes inconvenient, difficult or misaligned with real behaviour. The Madina-Adenta overpasses illustrate this well: although people demanded safer crossings, many avoided the footbridges because they perceived them to be too long, poorly located relative to their desired crossing points, inconvenient and unsafe.

This showed that solving a problem is not enough; successful change depends on whether people can and will actually use the solution in practice.

The footbridges on the Madina-Adenta Highway offer a striking example of why many change efforts fail even when stakeholders initially demand them. After repeated protests over pedestrian deaths and injuries, authorities completed footbridges along the highway.

Yet usage remains low, with many pedestrians citing the length, height, location and inconvenience of the bridges, forcing authorities to rely on enforcement to drive compliance. Interactions conducted along the highway, together with feedback from colleagues and pedestrians who use the footbridge daily, indicate that crossing the road has become an established and familiar practice for many users. This behaviour has persisted over time and remains the preferred option for a significant number of pedestrians, even after the construction of the footbridge.

While the footbridge contributed to a reduction in pedestrian injuries overall, many people continued to cross at road level because this was the behaviour they were accustomed to and found more convenient. This suggests that simply repairing or improving the footbridge may not have fully addressed the issue. The challenge is not the absence of infrastructure, but rather the fact that the intervention did not sufficiently align with existing user habits and movement patterns.

In other words, the problem was not the need for change itself, but the failure to effectively manage and encourage adoption of the intended behaviour.

This is a familiar pattern in many organisations. Employees may ask for a new policy, customers may request a new service, and citizens may call for a new public intervention. But once the change arrives, enthusiasm often gives way to avoidance. Leaders then conclude that people are resistant, ungrateful or irrational. That diagnosis is usually too simplistic.

A better explanation is that people support change in principle but reject the effort required to adopt it in practice.

The first lesson here is that leaders must design for compliance, not just announce a solution. If the new behaviour is physically demanding, time-consuming, poorly located or feels unsafe, people will revert to older habits. On Madina-Adenta, pedestrians did not merely need a bridge; they needed a crossing experience that was convenient, secure and clearly better than jaywalking.

An organisation cannot expect employees to adopt a new system, reporting line or operating model if doing so makes their work slower, harder or more confusing. Change is not complete when the infrastructure is built; it is complete when the new behaviour becomes the easiest acceptable choice.

This is where rewards matter. Rewards help people see immediate value in adopting a new behaviour before the long-term benefits become visible. In public settings, rewards might include better lighting, shade, cleaner walkways, shorter access routes, visible security and smoother connections to transport stops or markets. In organisations, rewards may be recognition, faster approvals, easier workflows, performance credit or financial incentives tied to the new behaviour.

The principle is straightforward: if leaders want adoption, they must reduce friction and increase the felt benefit of doing the right thing. Reward, in this sense, is not bribery. It is the deliberate reinforcement of desired behaviour.

But rewards alone are rarely enough. Successful change also requires consequences. When people ignore a new standard without penalty, they quickly learn that the old behaviour still works. Over time, non-compliance becomes normalised. That is why consequences must be credible, consistent and proportionate.

On the highway, the use of enforcement officers and sanctions signalled that unsafe crossing would no longer be tolerated. In organisations, consequences may include escalations, loss of privileges, audit flags, missed performance ratings or managerial accountability for non-adoption. Consequences work best when they are transparent and predictable, not arbitrary or humiliating. Their purpose is not punishment for its own sake; it is to protect the integrity of the change.

The real discipline of change management is knowing how to combine rewards and consequences. Overreliance on rewards can make change feel optional. Overreliance on punishment can create resentment, fear and symbolic compliance without real commitment. Effective leaders sequence the two by making the desired behaviour practical and worthwhile. Leaders continuously communicate why the change matters, remove obvious barriers and then enforce the standard consistently.

This balanced approach builds both legitimacy and accountability. People are far more likely to accept consequences when they can see that leaders have made a genuine effort to make compliance reasonable.

For executives, policy-makers and public administrators, the implication is clear. Do not measure change success by delivery alone. Measure it by usage or adoption. Before roll-out, ask four questions: Is the new behaviour easier than the old one?

Is the benefit immediate enough to matter? Is compliance socially visible and reinforced? Are the consequences for non-compliance clear and fair? If the answer to any of these questions is no, resistance should not be surprising. It should be expected.

The Madina-Adenta overpasses show that people do not always reject change because they oppose it. Usually, they reject it because the path from intention to adoption was not properly managed. Change leaders often assume that once people ask for a solution, they will naturally embrace it.

They will not. Lasting change happens when leaders align the design of the solution with human behaviour, reinforce adoption through meaningful rewards, and protect the new standard through credible consequences. That is how the requested change becomes a successful change.

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