Despite billions spent on change management consultancy each year, research consistently shows that 60-70% of organisational change programmes fail to achieve their objectives. Having led and advised on transformation initiatives across two continents, I've witnessed this pattern repeatedly: ambitious visions, detailed project plans, and significant investment—followed by disappointing results and change fatigue.
Yet some organisations navigate change successfully. What differentiates success from failure? After analysing dozens of transformation programmes and reviewing academic literature on organisational change, clear patterns emerge.
The Usual Suspects: Surface-Level Explanations
When change programmes fail, organisations typically blame insufficient communication, lack of executive sponsorship, resistance to change, poor project management, or inadequate resources.
These factors matter, but they're symptoms rather than root causes. The real failures lie deeper, in three critical areas that organisations consistently underestimate.
Failure Point 1: Treating Change as a Project Rather Than a Transition
Most organisations approach change as a project: define scope, create a plan, execute, and close. This works for implementing new systems or processes. It fails for genuine organisational transformation.
Why? Because projects have defined endpoints, transitions don't. Projects deliver outputs; transitions require outcome adoption. Projects can be managed with Gantt charts; transitions require navigating human psychology, political dynamics, and cultural resistance.
William Bridges' research on transitions distinguishes between change (situational) and transition (psychological). Organisations manage the change—new structures, new processes, new systems. They neglect the transition—helping people let go of the old, navigate uncertainty, and embrace the new.
Failure Point 2: Underestimating the 'Frozen Middle'
Leadership teams often assume that if they're aligned at the top and communicate effectively, change will cascade down. This ignores the critical role of middle managers—the 'frozen middle' where change programmes frequently stall.
Middle managers face impossible demands during change: deliver business-as-usual results, implement new ways of working, support anxious teams, and manage their own uncertainty about their future role. Yet they're often the last to be engaged and the first to be blamed when change falters.
Failure Point 3: Failing to Address the Shadow Organisation
Every organisation has two structures: the formal (org chart, policies, processes) and the shadow (informal networks, unwritten rules, actual decision-making patterns). Change programmes focus on the formal; success depends on the shadow.
Research by Rob Cross and Andrew Parker on organisational network analysis reveals that informal networks—who people actually go to for information, advice, and support—often differ dramatically from formal reporting lines.
