The Wheel of Change: Create, Preserve, Eliminate, Accept

    In my book The Winning Edge, I share the Wheel of Change, a four-part tool that helps leaders create, preserve, eliminate and accept their way to lasting behaviour change.

    The Wheel of Change: Create, Preserve, Eliminate, Accept

    In all my years of training leaders across Maharashtra, I have watched one pattern repeat itself. Smart, ambitious people set a goal, feel a burst of motivation, change for a week or two, and then quietly slide back to exactly who they were before. The problem is almost never the goal. The problem is that they have no structure to hold the change in place.

    In my book The Winning Edge, The Champion Mindset, I devote real attention to this gap, because changing behaviour is the hardest work a leader will ever do. To make it manageable, I teach a simple but powerful tool that I learned to love through the work of Marshall Goldsmith and then adapted for my own life and my own workshops. It is called the Wheel of Change, and it has four parts: Create, Preserve, Eliminate and Accept.

    This article is for leaders who are tired of the motivation-and-relapse cycle and want a holistic way to actually change, and then keep that change alive. Let me walk you through the whole wheel exactly as I use it myself.

    Why behaviour change is the real leadership test

    It is easy to read a book, attend a seminar, and feel inspired. It is far harder to be a slightly better version of yourself thirty days later. As a leader, your behaviour is on display every single day, to your team, your peers, your family. The smallest habits compound, for better or for worse.

    I always remind the rooms I speak to that the only questions that really matter are the ones you ask yourself. That single idea reframes everything. Change is not something done to you by a trainer or a book. It is something you build, brick by brick, through the questions you are willing to ask yourself honestly.

    The only questions that really matter are the ones you ask yourself.

    The motivation trap

    Motivation is a feeling, and feelings fade. If your behaviour change depends on staying motivated, you have already lost, because no one stays motivated forever. The Wheel of Change replaces fragile motivation with a durable structure. Once you see your life as four moving parts that you can deliberately adjust, change stops being a mood and becomes a method.

    The four parts of the Wheel of Change

    The genius of the wheel is that it forces you to think about change from four directions at once, not just one. Most people only think about what they want to add. The wheel asks four questions, and a leader who answers all four gets a complete, holistic picture.

    1. Create

    Create is about the new. What new behaviours, habits, relationships or skills do you want to bring into your life? This is the part everyone enjoys, the exciting vision of the better you. In my own daily-questions sheet, for example, I commit to learning NLP and to empowering my team, both creative additions to who I am becoming.

    2. Preserve

    Preserve is the part almost everyone forgets. What is already working in your life that you must protect from your own enthusiasm for change? When we chase the new, we often trample the good we already have. Preserving means consciously keeping what serves you, your values, your strong relationships, the habits that already make you effective.

    3. Eliminate

    Eliminate asks what you must let go of. Some behaviours, commitments and even relationships hold you back. On my own sheet I made a hard decision to eliminate money-only seminars, the kind of work that paid but pulled me away from my real mission. Elimination is painful precisely because it asks you to give up something familiar.

    4. Accept

    Accept is the wisdom corner of the wheel. Some things you cannot change and should stop fighting. Acceptance is not defeat, it is the maturity to direct your energy where it can actually make a difference, instead of burning it on what is fixed.

    When we chase the new, we often trample the good we already have.
    Walking a leadership group through the four parts of the Wheel of Change in one of my workshops.

    Active Questions: the tool that preserves your change

    A wheel that only turns once is useless. The hardest part of behaviour change is not starting, it is keeping the change alive after the initial energy fades. This is where I rely on what I call Active Questions, a daily feedback scorecard that takes about fifteen minutes.

    The structure I learned from Marshall Goldsmith uses four sets of questions. Notice that the Wheel of Change itself lives inside the first set, which is exactly why the two tools belong together.

    Daily engaging questions

    These are phrased in active voice, beginning with the words did I do my best to. Did I do my best to set clear goals, to be engaged, to have a sense of progress, to find meaning, to be happy, to build positive relationships. The active phrasing is the secret. It puts the responsibility squarely on you, not on your circumstances. Alongside these sit the four parts of the Wheel of Change, Create, Preserve, Eliminate and Accept, reviewed every single day.

    Morning, evening and problem-solving questions

    1. Morning questions set your frame for the day. What am I happy, proud, excited, grateful and committed about, what am I enjoying, who loves me and whom do I love.
    2. Evening questions close the loop with gratitude and learning. What did I give today, what did I learn, how did today add to my life.
    3. Problem-solving questions turn obstacles into fuel. What is great about this, what is not perfect yet, what am I willing to do to make it perfect, what am I not willing to do, and how can I enjoy the process.

    Score yourself zero to ten, not yes or no

    A vital detail I insist on in my workshops is that you score each question from zero to ten, never as a simple yes or no. A binary score lets you off the hook. A number forces honesty. A six tells you something a yes never could.

    My own daily-questions sheet

    I never teach a tool I do not use myself, so let me be transparent about my own sheet. My three-year goal written at the top is to become a top-ten motivational speaker and behaviour coach in India. Underneath, my daily questions hold me to the behaviours that goal demands.

    That sheet is the Wheel of Change made practical. Creating NLP skill and team empowerment, preserving family dinners, eliminating the wrong kind of work, and accepting the slow, daily nature of progress itself.

    Three mantras to make it stick

    Over the years I have boiled the discipline down to three mantras that I give every leader I coach. Without these, even the best framework collapses under its own weight.

    Keep it simple, prioritise, follow up

    1. Keep it simple. Use ten to sixteen questions, no more. A scorecard you dread is a scorecard you abandon.
    2. Prioritise. Not every behaviour deserves a row. Choose the few that move the needle most.
    3. Follow up. The daily review is the engine. Skip it and the wheel stops turning.

    The patience the data demands

    Here is the honest truth I share with every group. Real merit from this practice shows up at thirty days, and the minimum threshold before you see anything worthwhile is about twelve days. Most people quit on day three. If you can simply hold on past twelve days, you cross into territory that almost no one reaches, and that is where genuine, holistic change begins.

    A binary score lets you off the hook. A number forces honesty.
    Coaching leaders to build their own daily Active Questions scorecard.

    Bring this to your team. I run behaviour-change-focused corporate training and keynotes for companies across Pune, Mumbai and all of Maharashtra.

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    Frequently Asked Questions

    What is the Wheel of Change?

    The Wheel of Change is a four-part behaviour-change framework I teach in my book The Winning Edge, drawn from the work of Marshall Goldsmith. The four parts are Create, Preserve, Eliminate and Accept. Together they force you to look at change from every direction, not just at what you want to add, so the change you make is holistic and lasting.

    How do Active Questions preserve behaviour change?

    Active Questions are a roughly fifteen-minute daily feedback scorecard phrased in active voice, beginning with did I do my best to. By scoring yourself zero to ten every day across engaging, morning, evening and problem-solving questions, you keep your chosen behaviours in front of you and hold yourself accountable, which is what preserves the change over time.

    How long before this practice works?

    In my experience the real merit shows up at thirty days, and the minimum threshold before you notice meaningful change is about twelve days. Most people give up too early. If you push past twelve days, you reach the point where the practice begins to pay off.

    Can you run this as corporate training for our company?

    Yes. I deliver the Wheel of Change and the Active Questions system as corporate training and keynotes for teams across Pune, Mumbai and Maharashtra. You can reach me through my contact page to design a session for your leaders.

    If your leaders are stuck in the motivation-and-relapse cycle, I would love to help you build a structure that actually holds. Visit my contact page to talk about a session, explore my corporate training programs, or learn more about how I work with leaders as a leadership trainer in Pune. This article is adapted from my book The Winning Edge, The Champion Mindset.

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    Avinash Chate

    India's Leading Corporate Trainer | TEDx Speaker | Author

    With 1000+ organizations trained including RBI, JSW Steels, and Ferrero, Avinash Chate delivers high-impact corporate training across India. Creator of the KITE Leadership Framework and bestselling author of "The Winning Edge."

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