Execute the Change — Aubène 2028 and the Hidden Resistance

A five-round, advanced change-execution simulation set inside Aubène Assurances SA, a proud 58-year-old French personal-lines insurer (Nantes HQ, 3,200 employees, EUR 1.4bn gross written premiums, a thin 97% combined ratio). The board has funded 'Aubène 2028' — a EUR 60 million, 18-month digital-and-operating-model transformation to defend margins against direct insurers taking ~2 points of share a year. The strategy is sound and funded; three previous transformations still died — not by revolt but by polite compliance, passive delay and a gravitational pull back to the old ways. Surface surveys show 78% 'support', yet the regional branch barons whose informal power the new model erodes are quietly briefing against it. Playing the newly appointed Change Leader, you (1) diagnose the organisation's changeability across structural, behavioural and psychodynamic dimensions and expose the gap between stated and actual readiness the 78% conceals, (2) map the political landscape and surface the hidden resistance — naming the threat to status, identity, competence or control behind each baron's covert opposition and distinguishing noisy-but-harmless dissent from quiet-but-lethal reversion, (3) choose where to intervene with finite time and political capital — co-opt the powerful Division Head, build a front-line coalition, redesign incentives, create early wins or confront blockers — knowing each move has a political cost and a changeability payoff, (4) sequence the 18-month execution against the month-9 board checkpoint, pacing change to the organisation's absorptive capacity so it sticks rather than snaps back, and (5) recover at the checkpoint when the barons' passive resistance has stalled claims digitisation and a board member questions the EUR 60M — re-treating the under-treated root resistance rather than redesigning a sound plan, and re-securing board confidence. The math draws on Jarrett's behavioural-strategy and changeability lens and punishes the five classic errors: trusting the 78%, crushing the Division Head you need, the big-bang launch, intervening only on surface symptoms, and blaming the plan at the checkpoint. Final KPIs track Changeability, Hidden Resistance surfaced, Political Capital and Board Confidence — and whether Aubène 2028 becomes the fourth programme in the graveyard or the one that finally lands.