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4. Change Management

The Open Ledger

Imposing constraints without burning trust

Use when

Leadership must take something away and still needs commitment

The Open Ledger, shown as a sequence of 3 parts: Price what you took, Put bad news first, Pay it back in authority.
  1. 1

    Price what you took

    One page, two columns, dollars per employee per year, read aloud by the CEO. Anything not yet given back is listed as owing, with a date.

  2. 2

    Put bad news first

    One weekly forum where red items are heard before anything else. The senior person thanks whoever raises the first problem, and help arrives within 24 hours.

  3. 3

    Pay it back in authority

    Checkpoints agreed up front at 30, 60 and 90 days, where teams that deliver win named authority, flexibility, or a local pilot.

“Price what you take, reward the truth, pay trust back with authority.”

How to use it

Do not use inside 90 days of a layoff, or when the real problem is the product. The ledger only works if the pricing is honest enough to be embarrassing; a sanitised ledger reads as spin and costs more trust than saying nothing.

Card details

Model type
Sequence
Origin status
Original
Content last reviewed
28 July 2026

Origin

Original

Harsimran Kaur Kapoor, 2026. Lineage named: Denise Rousseau's psychological contract made explicit and priced; Ford's Business Plan Review under Alan Mulally; Sitkin's stretch-goal gates.

Used in these workflows

Compensation & Benefits

Neighbouring models

Adoption sequence (ADKAR)Kotter's 8 stepsBridges' transitionsThe change curveSocial threat response (SCARF)Lewin + force fieldCompeting commitments (Immunity to Change)Theory E and Theory OChange execution risk score (DICE)The pre-mortem
NextThe Manager Load Budget→

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