Michelle Rozen, Ph.D., specializes in change. Since earning her master’s and doctorate in psychology over a decade ago (while raising three young children and working full-time), Rozen has helped executive leadership teams at companies like Johnson & Johnson, Merrill Lynch, Coca-Cola and Pfizer navigate massive organizational changes. Her work in this field has even earned her the nickname “the change doctor.”
Rozen’s latest book, The 6% Club, digs into how we can create and achieve the goals that we set out to accomplish.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
SUCCESS+: What is the 6% club?
Michelle Rozen: I surveyed 1,000 people all over the U.S. It was January 2023, and they all had some kind of a goal—business, personal, money, relationship, health, anything. I said, “Let’s see what happens with those people over time.”
So I surveyed them from January to June, and what I found out literally made my jaw drop—because what I found was that 94% of the people that pledged to do something dropped whatever they pledged for by February. And so that’s how the 6% club was born.
S+: What is the 0–10 rule, and how can someone use it to help them become one of the 6%?
MR: The 0–10 rule basically means that in the span of your day, you have too much to do. But if you run into a 94-percenter, one of the things that you’ll hear is, “Oh my gosh, I’m so busy…. I’ve been running around the whole day, [and I] didn’t even have lunch.” But if you look into what they actually accomplish in a given day—if you have things to do on a span of 10 is the most important [thing], and two and three are the less important things—they do a whole lot of twos and threes. Because there’s not enough time in the day, they don’t even get to their 10s.
What you get is a whole lot of busy with very little progress. One of the things that is characteristic of the six-percenters is that they are very, very good at identifying what their 10s are for the day, and they’re going to get those 10s down, no matter what. The twos and threes? They’re going to delegate them.
S+: How did you develop the 0–10 rule?
MR: Originally I borrowed it from the world of psychology and adapted it to the world of decision-making and prioritizing. I used it on myself first, and it helped me figure out how to prioritize my time.
When I started working with top leadership teams, I started sharing that tool with them and developing it. They find it incredibly helpful because they have too many things to do and their teams have too many things to do. When I did the research on the 6%, I discovered that one of the things that characterizes 6-percenters is ruthless prioritizing, compared to the 94%.
S+: What’s the biggest difference between a good leader and a great leader?
MR: People skills—that’s the biggest shift that happened in leadership from 2020 until today. And it’s a struggle for a lot of people because leadership used to be very matrix-oriented, and now it’s very people-oriented. The bottom line is, if you’re not the kind of person that has excellent people skills—communication and coaching, things of that nature—you really need to work on it. They’re not skills that you can’t acquire, but they’re not optional. They’re mandatory for leaders today.
S+: How can leaders better grow and adapt to the inevitable yet necessary changes they see within their team or organization?
MR: The world changes very quickly. It’s a shift from the kind of person that says, “How do I adapt?”—which is more passive—to “How do I… not just adapt, but initiate change to things to make them more impactful and effective? Within the changing landscape, how do I better my ways as a leader? How do I become more effective? How do I fix the things that don’t work so that I am able to reach my goals?”
Stop doing things that don’t work and focus on your strengths and the things that you can improve so you can perform better in this rapidly changing world. Don’t argue with the changing world. Don’t hope that things will go back to old times—because they won’t. It’s going to keep changing very quickly. [So] you really need to up your game in terms of your personal and leadership skills so that you’re better equipped to deal with a storm.
This interview originally appeared in the May/June 2025 issue of SUCCESS+ Magazine. Photo courtesy of Dr. Michelle Rozen
