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The “Death by Pilot” Habit

The “Death by Pilot” Habit

25-04-04 | Bad Change Habits, Change Confessions

Some organisations treat pilot programmes like a warm and comforting security blanket. It starts with good intent: “Let’s test this first.”

Fair enough. A smart experiment can surface insights, reduce risk, and fine-tune delivery. But when the test becomes the destination, not the launchpad, you’ve fallen into the “Death by Pilot” trap.

Pilots should be springboards, not safety nets. But in too many organisations, “Let’s run a pilot” has become corporate code for we’re not ready to commit. We’ve all been there before; multiple waves of trials, stakeholder fatigue, feedback loops that go nowhere, and a growing suspicion that no one in management actually intends to make a decision.

When testing becomes an excuse for indecision, it’s no longer a useful iterative progression, but a delaying tactic. At best, it’s poor planning. At worst, it’s cowardice dressed up as prudence.

The cost? Change fatigue. Erosion of trust. People lose interest, disengage, and rightly question why this is happening yet again. All the potential of the transformation is worn down by inertia, overthinking, and a complete lack of ownership. It’s no wonder that 70% of transformations under-deliver on their promise.

Real experimentation comes with intention. A start and end. A decision point. Accountability. The goal is learning and action, not perpetual limbo. Leaders need to be brave enough to test, learn, and then commit.

If your organisation is still stuck piloting the pilot of the pilot, you need to take a long, hard, honest look in the mirror. Pilots in themselves aren’t the problem, but piloting without purpose is. Progress is what happens when clear decisions are made and clear direction is given.

That’s what real change leadership is about.

Welcome to the Friday Confessional. If you know, you know.

The “All Talk, No Walk” Habit: How Leaders Unknowingly Sabotage Change

The “All Talk, No Walk” Habit: How Leaders Unknowingly Sabotage Change

25-03-14 | Bad Change Habits, Change Confessions, Change Leadership

The conference room falls silent as the presentation concludes. The leadership team exchanges satisfied glances over their transformation manifesto. They’ve ticked all the boxes: bold vision, compelling case for change, clear roadmap. Their language is impeccable—agile, innovative, future-ready. The deck is polished to perfection.

There’s just one significant oversight: no one has considered how they themselves will need to change.

This isn’t simple executive inconsistency. It’s a more subtle blind spot—the assumption that transformation is something that happens throughout the organization, but somehow bypasses the executive suite.

Observe these transformation champions in their daily work. The VP who endorsed “radical empowerment” still reviews every document before it leaves her department. The CTO who championed “failing fast” continues to require comprehensive risk assessments for modest initiatives. The CEO who advocates “work-life balance” routinely sends urgent emails over the weekend.

They aren’t being deliberately contradictory. They simply don’t recognize the disconnect between the organizational change they’ve mandated and their own established behaviours and habits.

This misalignment creates a peculiar organizational tension. Employees hear the message of transformation but experience the persistent pull of status quo leadership. The result isn’t active resistance—it’s something more problematic: quiet disengagement and a loss of trust.

The solution isn’t found in another alignment workshop or communication plan. It requires creating honest feedback mechanisms that help leaders recognize their own resistance to change. It means having the professional courage to ask: “Which of my current behaviours contradicts the future we’re trying to create?”

Meaningful transformation begins when leaders understand they aren’t merely directing change from above; they’re active participants in the change itself.

Until then, organizations will continue mistaking announcements for achievements and intentions for results.

Welcome to the Friday Confessional. If you know, you know.

Bad Change Habits: The Band-Aid Over Bullet Wounds Habit

Bad Change Habits: The Band-Aid Over Bullet Wounds Habit

25-02-28 | Bad Change Habits, Change Confessions

Big problems usually demand big solutions, but in corporate change management, they often get quick, cosmetic fixes instead:

💥 Massive restructuring failure? Let’s just move the boxes on the org chart again and call it transformation.

💥 Widespread process breakdown? A new workflow tool will magically fix that (even if no one changes their behavior).

💥 Employee burnout from relentless, chaotic change? Throw in a wellness webinar and call it support.

This is the Band-Aid Over a Bullet Wound habit, where leaders ignore the root cause of change failures and instead roll out shiny, surface-level solutions that only frustrate the organization even more:

  • A new tool won’t fix broken processes. Automating inefficiency just makes you inefficient faster.
  • A reorg won’t fix leadership dysfunction. Moving the same ineffective leaders into different seats doesn’t change the fact that they’re still ineffective.
  • Another engagement survey won’t solve change fatigue. If employees are exhausted, maybe stop overloading them with constant, disconnected change initiatives instead of asking them how they feel about it.

These quick fixes look like action, but they’re just corporate theater, often led by HR and Comms, who should also be feeling the burn right now. Such performative gestures are designed to create the illusion of progress, yet they avoid the real, systemic work of change.

And when everything inevitably falls apart again? Guess what? Here comes the next Band-Aid.

Doing the hard work of real change would require leadership to acknowledge their role in the mess, and unfortunately, that’s often too much truth for most organizations to handle.

Welcome to the Friday Confessional. If you know, you know.

The Never-Ending Approval Process: A Corporate Nightmare

The Never-Ending Approval Process: A Corporate Nightmare

25-02-14 | Bad Change Habits, Change Confessions

It starts with a simple proposal.

A small, logical tweak to improve efficiency. Nothing controversial, nothing complicated, just the kind of thing that should take two weeks to implement.

And then, the telenovela begins.

Jamie is on holiday. We could proceed without her, but Jamie is very important (we think?), so we wait. Two weeks pass.

In the meantime, someone suggests we hold off until HR launches their new performance management system. Makes sense. No one is exactly sure when that’s happening, but…okay.

Then there’s Bob. Poor old Bob will hate this. If we invite him to the meeting, we’ll be here all year. Maybe we just… don’t?

And then Jamie returns: tanned, well-rested, and…she has some thoughts. Not about the proposal, mind you. Apparently the book she’s been reading while on vacation has blown her mind. She’s now full of ideas about how the company’s leadership culture should be radically transformed. She lays the book on the conference table, opens it at one of the many sticky bookmarks and starts reading out one of her highlighted quotes.

And just like that, the project is no longer about a simple process change. It’s about rethinking the way we work. It needs a new framework, new messaging, a new sponsor, and of course, a vision statement and possibly its own branding and intranet site.

A new round of meetings is scheduled. A new slide deck is in the works. The original problem? No one remembers. But Jamie’s book? Internal comms is already managing the order for the entire company.

And just like that, the project doesn’t get approved. It gets reimagined.

Simple changes don’t fail because they’re hard. They fail because over-enthusiastic executives turn them into grand reinventions of the wheel, chasing trends and building legacies for their own future instead of solving the problems that are costing us customers today.

Welcome to The Friday Confessional. If you know, you know.

Bad Change Habits: Ghosting the Organization

Bad Change Habits: Ghosting the Organization

25-01-24 | Bad Change Habits, Change Confessions

What a spectacular launch!

A big kickoff event. A fancy new logo. A well-produced leadership video about “embracing transformation.” A dedicated Slack channel, briefly buzzing with excitement.

And then… silence.

No follow-ups. No updates. No sign that anyone outside the project team still remembers this initiative exists.

But inside the project team? Oh, they’re super-busy with endless working sessions, steering committee discussions,  and status reports that are circulated at the highest levels but never shared with the people who actually have to live with the change.

Meanwhile, the organization assumes nothing is happening. Employees move on. New priorities emerge. The Slack channel fades into irrelevance, now occupied by the occasional bot notification and someone accidentally posting in the wrong thread.

Then, months later, the project team comes bursting back onto the scene with a new announcement: “Exciting Updates on Our Change Initiative!”

The reaction?
“Wait… that’s still a thing?”

It’s like a long-lost ex suddenly texting, “Hey, what’s up?” after months of radio silence. Except this time, they want you to change the way you do your job.

Re-engaging an organization after ghosting them is twice as hard as keeping them engaged in the first place. Now, there’s skepticism. Exhaustion. A sense that this is just another project that will fizzle out.

Change doesn’t fail because people resist it. It fails because they forgot why they were supposed to care in the first place.

Welcome to The Friday Confessional. If you know, you know.