Lower the Bar to Raise It: Why Transformation Requires a Temporary Dip in Performance

What if struggling during change doesn’t mean something is wrong—but means it’s working? In this episode of OWLCAST, David Morelli and William Oakley explore why real transformation almost always comes with a temporary dip in performance. From AI adoption to leadership behavior change, they explain the neuroscience of learning, the danger of abandoning change too early, and how leaders can normalize the dip to unlock higher performance on the other side.Key Topics:•    Meaningful change requires unlearning—and that creates a temporary performance dip. •    Leaders must normalize the dip to prevent premature abandonment of change. •    Learning goals outperform performance goals during transformation. •    Motivation often drops when people realize how much they don’t know—and that’s normal. •    Immersion and repetition shorten the “awkward phase” of learning. •    Coaching conversations dramatically reduce the pain and length of the dip. •    Transformation fails when leaders expect performance without allowing learning.