Early supporters of a change get the hardest and most politically exposed work, paid in talk of the inner circle and a promised reward, and are often dropped once their energy runs out.
An example
When a hotel group with thirty properties moved pricing from individual general managers to a central revenue team, the first volunteers were four property revenue managers who had pushed for the change for years. The chief commercial officer called them the founding team. They ran the pilot hotels, presented the pricing overrides to angry general managers, and took the complaints when weekend rates dropped. Each was told a director role would follow the rollout. Nothing was written down. Eighteen months in, two had moved to competitors, one was on medical leave, and the fourth learned that the director roles had been folded into a new structure led by an outside hire. A second cohort of volunteers was announced at the next town hall, under the same name.
Why it works
Every one of the four ways is in play. Taking the dangerous work looks better because it is presented as anointment: closeness to the sponsor, a place in the inner circle, a hand in the company's future. It feels easier because the volunteer's own commitment discounts each new ask. Saying no looks worse, recast as backsliding by someone who was never a true believer, and costs more, since refusing means exile from the change cohort with bridges to the old guard already burned. It works when the person's identity is fused with the change, the sponsor decides who counts as a real change agent, and the promised reward is never committed in writing.
The thinking behind it
Robert B. Cialdini Influence (1984) describes commitment and consistency: once people take a position, especially a public one, they feel pressure to act in line with it, and small early commitments make larger later ones easier to obtain. Early change agents have declared themselves in public, so each new hard assignment feels like consistency with who they said they were. Getting the reward in writing before the next ask interrupts the chain.
Leon Festinger A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957) holds that two cognitions that do not fit, such as a belief and an action that contradicts it, produce discomfort, and that people often reduce it by changing the belief to fit what they have done. A volunteer who has absorbed heavy costs for a program tends to value it more as the costs mount. An identity outside the program gives them a vantage point the dissonance does not reach.
Hal R. Arkes The Psychology of Sunk Cost (1985), by Hal Arkes and Catherine Blumer, describes a greater tendency to continue an endeavor once money, effort, or time has been invested, traced partly to a wish not to appear wasteful. A change agent who has burned bridges with the old guard has sunk a great deal into the program, so stepping back feels like writing it all off. Hearing from the last cohort shows what those costs bought.
Warning signs
Every difficult or politically dangerous workstream belongs to the same few volunteers. The promised promotion or seat is discussed often and documented nowhere. Volunteers who pace themselves are described as having lost their nerve. The cohort turns over each cycle, and a new group is recruited with the same language as the last.
How to defend yourself
Get the promised reward in writing, with a date, before you take the next hard assignment; its absence is the clearest warning.
- Keep an identity outside the program: a professional network, side work, a life outside the office that the program does not own.
- Keep relationships with the old guard where you can, so a step back is not exile.
- Talk to people from the last cohort about what happened to them.
- Decline assignments that carry the program's political risk without its authority, and say why.
If you have already burned out once, warn the next group. The pattern often stops when former champions speak up.
How a leader shuts it down
Sponsors owe early volunteers a duty of care. Write down what they will get and when, rotate the most exposed work, and pair it with matching authority. Track what happens to each cohort of change volunteers after the program ends, and if most of them leave, count that as a failure of the program.