The Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) partnered with Neurofied to support a directorate during a period of major, overlapping change. With the introduction of a new European asylum procedure, potential political shifts, the transition to a new IT environment, and changing roles and responsibilities, the IND finds itself in a highly complex transition marked by high workload and limited room for reflection.
In an interactive plenary keynote followed by a working session, we focused on how people and organizations deal with uncertainty during change. Drawing on insights from behavioral psychology and neuroscience, as described in our book The Dynamics of Business Behavior, we explored why resistance is often not unwillingness, but a natural response to uncertainty, ambiguity, and loss of control. This provided a shared frame of reference to better understand the current phase of change.
We then worked with a practical framework to move from strategic ambition to concrete action by connecting priorities, behavior, and systems. Participants explored how abstract goals only start to guide action when they are translated into observable behavior on the work floor and supported by appropriate processes, structures, and agreements.
In the second part of the program, participants worked with the Red-Blue Team intervention. This evidence-based method makes different perspectives explicit and helps surface underlying concerns, assumptions, and tensions. By deliberately creating constructive conflict, space emerged for dialogue, mutual understanding, and shared responsibility.
The session helped the directorate create focus in a complex change context, address difficult trade-offs, and define concrete next steps. It marked a meaningful shift from thinking about the future to acting on it, with attention to both the human and organizational sides of change.