Change Agents

(Audio Deep Dive English; Audio Deep Dive Bangla)

I am involved in teaching a course in management and as we look at the readings, and I draw on my lived experience as a teacher and a researcher, I confront an element that exists in most systems – from personal relationships to instititutions – the change agent. Every system eventually produces a change agent the way damp walls produce mold - quietly at first, then suddenly everywhere, and by the time you notice you’re already breathing it in. They don’t arrive because the system asked for transformation. They arrive because they can smell fatigue and dissatisfaction, because tired people are the easiest to recruit into dramatic rewrites of reality, and because nothing energizes certain personalities like the chance to insert themselves into the center of someone else’s narrative and call it salvation. At first it’s charm, it’s sincerity, it’s the soft voice with the hard message: “This doesn’t have to be this way.” Technically true, of course. My blood pressure doesn’t have to be this way either. But the change agent isn’t here to solve problems; they’re here to solve their own hunger - hunger for attention, power, relevance, control. Systems are hard to fix. Narratives are easy to hijack. So the first move is never structural improvement. It is memory manipulation. Suddenly the past isn’t imperfect - it’s intolerable. Your workplace isn’t inefficient - it’s toxic. Your routines aren’t stability - they’re fear-based compliance. Your relationships aren’t complicated - they’re oppression disguised as normalcy. And the greatest trick is that you are made to feel slightly ashamed for having survived comfortably inside all that “brokenness,” as if stability itself is a moral failure, as if not being miserable enough is evidence that you were not awake, not evolved, not brave. And then, right on cue, comes the seduction: you deserve better, you were undervalued, you were unseen, you were held back, your suffering was not random - it was preparation for the glorious future that only they can deliver. The future is always bright and conveniently vague, with no timelines, no details, no measurable outcomes - just belief - because belief is the cheapest currency on earth and the easiest to extract from people who are worn down and quietly hoping for rescue. So people begin to take risks, not because the new path is proven but because the old story has been branded shameful; they burn bridges, sever ties, erase decades of memory, discard routines that once kept them afloat and call it growth, abandon imperfect but real relationships and call it healing, and all of it happens under the invisible pressure of the change agent’s most effective tactic: turning caution into cowardice and doubt into disloyalty. And this is where the change agent’s real masterpiece begins, because at some point the system resists, someone pauses, someone asks a reasonable question - “Are we sure?” -  and the change agent cannot allow that pause to become a decision, so the entire narrative pivots from improvement to obligation. The charm fades. The tone shifts. The story becomes personal. Now it’s no longer about the system being broken; now it’s about you possibly breaking them. They start collecting emotional debt. After everything I’ve done… after how much I’ve invested… you’re really going to let me down now? And just like that, the proposed change is no longer a choice. It becomes a moral test. You are no longer evaluating an idea; you are being evaluated as a person. Hesitation becomes betrayal. Skepticism becomes cruelty. Boundaries become selfishness. And here comes the ultimate hostage mechanism: the agent presents the future as a disaster if the change doesn’t happen, not for the system, not for the people, but for the agent. If this fails, it will destroy me. If you don’t do this, I will be ruined. I don’t deserve to be abandoned. That last line - spoken or implied - is the spine of the entire operation: the agent frames themselves as fragile while simultaneously demanding absolute loyalty, as if their vulnerability gives them the right to control everyone else’s decisions. They don’t earn trust; they demand it. They don’t invite commitment; they guilt you into it. They weaponize your empathy, because decent people don’t want to be the villain in someone else’s sob story, and the change agent knows that. So you start suppressing instincts, ignoring warning signs, swallowing discomfort, because walking away now would feel like pushing someone off a cliff, even though you didn’t build the cliff, you didn’t ask them to stand at the edge, and you certainly didn’t sign up to be responsible for their emotional survival. But the agent has made it clear: their identity is now tied to this transformation; their reputation, their ego, their sense of self - their whole theatre production - depends on your compliance, so the system must bend, people must sacrifice, old anchors must be burned, and every sacrifice is framed not as loss but as proof of loyalty. And when the promised future doesn’t arrive - when the glitter fades and reality shows up with invoices - the change agent performs the final trick: if the plan succeeds they are the hero, if it collapses they are the martyr, and either way they are never accountable, because accountability is for people who build things, not for people who sell stories. They disappear into the next system, the next tired crowd, the next circle of bruised souls, leaving behind fractured relationships, destabilized structures, shattered memories, and the most humiliating realization of all - that you were never asked to build a better future, you were asked to protect someone else’s ego from being let down, to carry their narrative on your back, and to call the damage “progress.” The change agents have their anthem in the Earta Kitt song where she says, “If I don't get my cha cha heels/I'll walk all over you.”