In the boardrooms of global corporations, we’ve perfected the art of complicating the obvious. The change management industry has built empires on frameworks and methodologies that promise transformation but often deliver disappointing results. A recent Gartner report even advocates for an “open-source approach” where senior leaders should step back and let employees lead change implementation.
But this well-intentioned advice misses a fundamental truth: most change initiatives fail not because of insufficient employee involvement, but because of a critical leadership vacuum at the top. While employee engagement matters, true transformation requires more CEO leadership, not less.

The CEO’s Missing Mandate

When CEOs delegate change to HR departments or external consultants, they’re not just abdicating responsibility; they’re signalling to the entire organization that transformation is someone else’s job. This subtle message cascades through every layer of the company, creating what I call “the spectator syndrome,” where employees watch change happen to them rather than through them.
Gartner’s 2019 report notes that “more than 80% of organizations manage change from the top down” where “senior leaders exclusively make strategic decisions, create implementation plans, and then roll out organizationwide communication to gain workforce buy-in.” What Gartner fundamentally misunderstands is that the problem isn’t top-down strategy setting—it’s the leadership vacuum in implementation. In most organizations, senior leaders may dictate the strategy, but then project teams and middle managers are left to execute without adequate leadership attention, sponsorship, or adequate resources. This abandonment during the critical implementation phase is what truly undermines change efforts.

Research emphatically supports the critical importance of sustained CEO involvement. According to McKinsey’s State of Organizations 2023 Report, “transformations are more than five times more likely to succeed if leaders model the desired behavioural changes.” The same report notes that “an organization is 2.4 times more likely to achieve performance targets if it has a focus on developing leaders.” Meanwhile, a study from the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) found that only 15% of organizations report highly successful culture transformations, with leadership engagement being a key differentiator between success and failure.

Beyond Management to Leadership

Traditional change management focusing on processes, timelines, and deliverables treats transformation like a project to be managed rather than a culture to be cultivated. This mechanical approach misses the fundamental human element that requires the space, permission, involvement, and role models to swiftly adapt to the new organizational expectations.

Consider how this plays out in practice: A CEO announces a major digital transformation initiative but continues to require printed reports and avoids using the new systems personally. Meanwhile, middle managers are expected to champion tools their leadership doesn’t visibly embrace. The disconnect is palpable and undermines the entire effort.

True change leadership, by contrast, emerges when CEOs personally model the new behaviours and standards they expect. The most successful transformations I’ve witnessed involve CEOs who conduct regular floor walks to observe implementation challenges firsthand, who publicly acknowledge their own learning curves with new systems, and who visibly adjust their decision-making processes to align with the new direction.

From Spectators to Owners

The most powerful shift happens when CEOs transform the narrative from “the company is changing” to “we are evolving together.” This isn’t merely semantic, it’s a fundamental reorientation of how change happens.

Gartner’s research indicates that only “25% of employees are able to change the way they work when managed from the top down” and suggests that “shifting implementation planning to employees can boost the probability of change success by 12%.” What this narrow interpretation misses is the false dichotomy between CEO leadership and employee ownership. The reality is that strong CEO leadership actually catalyzes rather than inhibits genuine employee ownership.

When CEOs adopt the role of spectators, who, like football fans, know what is best, but aren’t doing the sweating, employees naturally respond with scepticism, resistance, or passive compliance. Their psychological positioning is defensive rather than creative. But when CEOs position themselves as fellow travellers on the transformation journey—vulnerable, learning, and committed—something remarkable happens: ownership cascades.

I’ve observed this phenomenon in multiple industries, but one example stands out. A global manufacturing company was experiencing a full-blown crisis following a poorly executed merger. Product quality had plummeted, customer satisfaction scores were in free fall, and the leadership team was in open warfare—the Head of Operations blamed the Head of Sales for overpromising, Sales accused Operations of underdelivering, and everyone pointed fingers at HR for failing to integrate the two cultures.

For months, the CEO had delegated the integration to his direct reports and focused on external stakeholder management. But when quarterly results showed the division was now the worst-performing in the company, he finally stepped in—not just to mandate solutions, but to personally mediate the conflict. He instituted weekly resolution sessions where he refused to let anyone leave until specific cross-functional issues were addressed, and he personally reviewed the most problematic customer accounts.

Most crucially, he acknowledged his own failure in not providing sufficient leadership during the merger. This accountability from the top transformed the dynamic completely. Within eight months, the division had not only resolved its quality issues but had become the most profitable unit in the global business. When asked what changed, a middle manager remarked, “When we saw the CEO getting his hands dirty, we appreciated that he was finally paying attention to the critical matters affecting the survival of our business. We all respected that.”

The key mechanism here is what psychologists call “reciprocity.” When leaders demonstrate authentic engagement with change, employees respond in kind. The question shifts from “Why are they making us change?” to “How can I contribute to our evolution?”

This transition from spectator to owner isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s the fundamental difference between change that sticks and change that slips. And it begins, unequivocally, with the CEO.

The False Promise of “Open Source” Change

Gartner’s core claim that “top-down change strategies are fundamentally disconnected from today’s workflow” misdiagnoses the problem. The issue isn’t that CEOs are directing the strategic aspects of change—it’s that they’re missing in action during implementation. Gartner’s proposed solution of an “open-source approach” where employees lead implementation planning without visible CEO involvement simply creates a different kind of disconnect.

What organizations truly need is not less CEO direction, but more CEO presence throughout the implementation journey. When project teams and middle managers are left to drive implementation without visible CEO sponsorship and attention, they lack the authority, resources, and organizational alignment needed to overcome inevitable obstacles.

The data is clear: organizations achieve more profound, sustained transformation when their CEOs remain visibly committed not just to setting strategy but to supporting implementation—modelling the change, creating psychological safety, removing barriers, and empowering teams through their visible commitment rather than through their absence.

Ready to Lead Real Change?

Is your organization stuck in endless cycles of change initiatives that deliver underwhelming results? Perhaps it’s time to reject the conventional wisdom that CEOs should step back, and instead embrace authentic change leadership from the top.

If you want to revolutionize how your organization approaches change, book a free consultation today and discover how putting authentic CEO-led change leadership at the centre of your approach can transform not just what your company does, but how your leaders can own the journey forward.