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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.

Why Change Leadership Should Be the #1 Priority for CEOs

Why Change Leadership Should Be the #1 Priority for CEOs

25-03-11 | Actionable Insights, Change Leadership

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. 

The Tyranny of Best Practices: Why Copy-Paste Change Models Don’t Work

The Tyranny of Best Practices: Why Copy-Paste Change Models Don’t Work

25-03-04 | Actionable Insights, Change Leadership, Problem-Solving

Every organization is unique; its culture, people, challenges, and market dynamics create a distinctive ecosystem. Yet, when it comes to leading change, there exists a dangerous myth: that somewhere out there is a perfect, universal “best practice” waiting to be discovered and implemented. This belief has spawned countless models, frameworks, and methodologies that promise transformation—if only you follow the prescribed steps.

The problem? Best practices in change management are often the enemy of real transformation.

The Illusion of Universal Solutions

When an organization faces the need for transformation, the first instinct of many leaders is to reach for the familiar playbook: Kotter’s 8 Steps, ADKAR, or whatever framework their preferred consultancy is selling this quarter. There’s comfort in following established paths, especially when they come with case studies of success from Fortune 500 companies.

While these models offer useful insights, they also encourage a dangerous mindset: that change can be mechanized, templated, and universally applied. Even worse, reliance on these models shifts the focus from leadership and ownership to compliance, turning change into a checklist exercise instead of an actively managed experience across all levels of the organization.

The reality is that every organization has its own unique culture, people, history, and challenges, and no two change journeys are alike. Attempting to transplant another company’s change journey into your environment is like trying to grow tropical plants in arctic conditions. Context matters.

The Leadership Accountability Crisis

One of the biggest, yet often overlooked, reasons why change initiatives fail is a lack of leadership accountability. Organizations invest heavily in training and implementing traditional change management methodologies but fail to ensure their leadership team is truly aligned, committed, and accountable for success.

Despite intricate governance structures presented in slide decks, project teams typically lack the authority and empowerment to resolve the impact of poor change leadership. They become the executors of potentially doomed initiatives, while those with actual power to ensure success are disengaged, following a different agenda or quietly waiting for the initiative to fizzle out.

The symptoms are painfully familiar:

  • The Misaligned Executive Team: Leaders nod in agreement during steering committee meetings but pursue conflicting priorities behind closed doors. You’ll notice executives contradict each other in separate forums, creating confusion about what truly matters.
  • The Ghost Sponsor: The executive sponsor appears at the kick-off, then becomes mysteriously unavailable for key decisions. Their calendar is perpetually full when difficult conversations are needed, but they’re quick to question why progress is slow.
  • The Priority Paradox: Everything is labelled “top priority,” creating an impossible environment where teams are pulled in multiple directions simultaneously. When asked to rank initiatives, leaders refuse to make the tough calls about what can wait.
  • The Blame Game: Responsibility constantly shifts among leaders. “That’s Marketing’s issue” or “We’re waiting on Operations” becomes the refrain, with no one willing to break the deadlock.
  • The Resource Mirage: Leaders approve ambitious transformation roadmaps without allocating adequate resources. Teams are expected to deliver change “on top of” their day jobs, with no reprioritization of existing responsibilities.
  • The Silent Resistance: Senior leaders who disagree with the change remain silent in forums but undermine it through their actions, withholding resources or failing to reinforce messages with their teams.
  • The Metrics Disconnect: Leadership incentives and KPIs remain unchanged despite the transformation initiative, signalling to everyone that the status quo is actually what’s valued.

This toxic combination creates an environment where change fatigue isn’t just a temporary condition, it’s a chronic organizational state. The result is mounting resistance, disengagement and indifference that no communication plan or training programme can overcome.

From Change Management to Change Leadership

The shift we need isn’t merely semantic, it’s fundamental. Change management implies a mechanical process that can be implemented in clear, sequential steps; while change leadership acknowledges the messy, human-centred reality of transformation and places responsibility squarely where it belongs: with those who have the power to make or break initiatives.

Truly accountable leaders:

  • Take personal ownership for transformation outcomes, not just approving plans
  • Align with their peers on clear priorities and actively prevent project proliferation
  • Provide visible, consistent sponsorship beyond kick-off meetings
  • Create space for teams by ruthlessly prioritizing initiatives
  • Recognize when organizational capacity is reaching its limits
  • Empower teams to speak truth about challenges without fear
  • Understand that their behaviour, not their words, signals what truly matters

The Courage to Lead, Not Just Manage

The most successful transformations I’ve witnessed came from leaders brave enough to take genuine accountability, make tough prioritization decisions, and create the conditions for success.

These leaders understood that their primary responsibility wasn’t approving plans or receiving status updates, it was removing obstacles, aligning their peers, and preventing the initiative overload that invariably leads to failure. They recognized that no methodology can compensate for leadership misalignment or vague guidance.

This doesn’t mean ignoring the lessons of those who came before, it means understanding that even the best methodology fails without leadership accountability as its foundation.

Breaking the Cycle of Failure

The next time you face a significant change initiative, resist the urge to reach for the familiar playbook or launch yet another project into an already saturated organization. Instead, the leadership team should constructively discuss:

  • What are we willing to stop doing to make room for this initiative?
  • How will we, as leaders, remain visibly accountable throughout the journey?
  • How will we prevent misalignment among ourselves from derailing the effort?
  • What signals will tell us we’re approaching organizational change capacity?
  • How will we empower teams to speak truth about challenges without fear?

The honest answers to these questions will guide you toward an approach that addresses the real determinants of success—leadership accountability and organizational capacity—not just methodological concerns.

The Ready to Embrace True Leadership Accountability?

If you’re tired of watching well-intentioned change initiatives crumble? Do you want to build genuine leadership accountability and create the conditions for success?

📅 Book a free consultation today to explore how we can help your leadership team take true ownership of transformation, make the hard prioritization decisions, and prevent the change fatigue that breeds resistance. Because when it comes to transformation, no methodology can compensate for true change leadership.

Stop Blaming Employees: Change Resistance is a Leadership Issue

Stop Blaming Employees: Change Resistance is a Leadership Issue

25-02-25 | Actionable Insights, Change Leadership, Problem-Solving

When a change effort falters, frustration moves in one direction: downward. Employees are accused of resisting new ways of working, project teams are blamed for poor execution, and middle managers are criticized for not driving change.

Yet, the people making these judgments, i.e. the executives who define, fund, and sponsor change, rarely ask the tougher question: What was our role in this failure?

Employees don’t control priorities, budgets, or decision-making. They can’t set the vision or remove roadblocks. If change isn’t taking hold, leadership, not employees, should be the first place we look.

Why Employees Are Labeled ‘Resistant’

What’s often mistaken for “resistance” is a rational response to poorly led change. Employees and middle managers don’t push back because they dislike change itself. Often the rationale for the change is clearly understood. The reason why people hesitate to adopt a change, it’s often because:

  • The reason for the change is unclear, making it difficult to trust or prioritize.
  • Leaders fail to model the change themselves, sending mixed signals.
  • The change feels like just another knee-jerk reaction with no long-term commitment.
  • Project teams face shifting priorities, unrealistic expectations, or limited resources.
  • Middle managers are expected to drive adoption but lack the authority or executive backing to do so effectively.

Despite these real barriers, leadership tends to deflect responsibility, assuming that the problem lies with those further down the chain.

The Leadership Behaviors That Sabotage Change

Many executives assume that once they announce a change, their job is done and alignment will naturally follow. But transformation isn’t automatic, it requires consistent, active leadership engagement. Change efforts fail when leaders:

  • Announce transformation intentions but fail to back it up with action and commitment.
  • Assume employees will “figure it out” instead of providing clear direction and support.
  • Delegate responsibility to project teams or HR, treating change as an operational task instead of a leadership priority.
  • Blame execution failures instead of questioning whether the strategy, resources, and leadership commitment were sufficient to achieve the desired results.

When these missteps go unaddressed, organizations fall into a cycle where change stalls, initiatives lack credibility, skepticism increases, and employees become disengaged. And once people lose trust in their leadership’s ability to see things through to completion, the organization becomes unwilling and unable to make a change for the better.

What Leaders Must Do Differently

To break this cycle, leaders must stop blaming employees and start leading change effectively from the front. That means:
Owning change as a leadership responsibility. If executives aren’t engaged, employees won’t be either.

Aligning leadership incentives with the change. Mediocre results are inevitable if leadership performance isn’t aligned with change success.

Providing clarity and removing roadblocks. Change fails when employees are expected to work around barriers that leadership should have addressed.

Holding themselves accountable before blaming others. Before assuming employees are the issue, leaders must ask: What haven’t we done to set this up for success?

Final Thought: Change Fails From the Top, Not the Bottom

Real transformation starts at the top. It’s not about forcing compliance. It’s about leading with clarity, conviction, and commitment. Instead of expecting employees to simply ‘get it,’ articulate the vision. Instead of blaming teams for poor execution, remove the obstacles in their way. Instead of waiting for change to take hold organically, drive it with intention.

Don’t shift responsibility; own the change. That’s what real change leadership looks like.

 

📅 Successful transformation starts with leadership accountability. Book a free consultation to uncover the real roadblocks and build a change strategy that works.

Schedule your call here.

The Sin of Leadership Gaslighting

The Sin of Leadership Gaslighting

25-02-21 | Change Confessions, Change Leadership, Sins of Change

“We had a massive problem with resistance.”

That’s often the conclusion when a transformation effort crashes and burns. It couldn’t possibly have been the terrible strategy, the lack of communication, or the fact that the CEO and CFO nearly got into a wrestling match in the boardroom. Oh no!

The problem must have been the middle managers who didn’t do their job or the employees who just “don’t get it.”

This is not a psychology lesson, but still: welcome to Leadership Gaslighting 101 where the red flags line up as…

🚩 Employees pointing out real problems.

🚩 Leadership dismissing them as “negativity” or “resistance.”

🚩 The initiative stalling and ultimately failing.

🚩 Leadership blaming employees for “not embracing the vision.”

Listen up, leaders, change managers, project leads and HR business partners: It’s not the change itself that people resist. It’s the BS with which it is often served: unrealistic timelines, indifference of existing workloads, ignorance of processes on the ground, disregard of the wisdom of the people actually doing the work.

People typically respond with resistance when:

  • Change has no clear rationale – Instead, the purpose and expected benefits of the change should be crystal clear, because “Leadership said so” isn’t a valid strategy. 
  • Change makes things worse – If the new system is slower, clunkier, and creates more work, don’t expect applause.
  • Change has no management buy-in – If managers don’t support the change, why should anyone else?
  • Change ignores past failures – Chasing the same old concept through the organization under a new name just treats employees like fools. They’ve been there and have the t-shirts.

If people are “resisting,” maybe they’re not the problem. Maybe the change itself is broken. Admitting that would mean taking accountability. But why do that, when you can just blame the organization?

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

Harnessing the Power of Storytelling in Change Leadership

Harnessing the Power of Storytelling in Change Leadership

25-02-18 | Actionable Insights, Change Leadership, Process & Methodology

Change is often approached as a process to manage, with structured plans, phases, and templates. Leaders outline the strategy and execution steps, expecting teams to follow along. Yet despite having clear objectives and project roadmaps, change efforts frequently stall, meet resistance, or fail outright.

Why does this happen?

Because change isn’t just a process, it’s a human experience. And humans don’t engage with spreadsheets, data, and logic alone, they engage with stories. This is why storytelling is one of the most powerful tools in change leadership. It helps teams make sense of the uncertainty, emotions, and resistance that naturally arise during transformation.

The Science Behind Storytelling and Change

Neuroscience research shows that our brains are wired for stories. Unlike raw data, which only activates the language-processing center of the brain, storytelling engages the sensory, emotional, and decision-making regions, making information more tangible and memorable.

Research from Princeton University shows that when someone hears a story, their brain activity mirrors that of the storyteller, creating a shared experience that enhances connection and retention. Similarly, studies from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business reveal that stories are significantly more effective at influencing beliefs and behavior than facts alone.

In the context of change leadership, storytelling builds trust, fosters empathy, and increases engagement. Harvard Business Review research highlights how storytelling triggers the release of oxytocin, a brain chemical responsible for trust and cooperation. These are both essential for getting teams to embrace change.

How Storytelling Transforms Change Leadership

1. Stories Make Change Tangible

Many change initiatives feel abstract to employees—structured as a set of strategic objectives, project phases, or implementation plans that lack personal connection.

Storytelling bridges this gap.

Rather than saying:

“We are implementing a new operating system.”

A story-driven approach would sound like:

“Right now, our teams are buried in tedious administrative work, manually entering data and juggling inefficient processes. It’s frustrating and time-consuming, pulling them away from what truly matters—our customers. With the new operating system, they’ll spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time delivering real value. This isn’t just about upgrading technology—it’s about making their work easier, faster, and more meaningful.”

This narrative makes the challenge and the benefit real. Instead of presenting the change as just another system rollout, it connects to what people care about—their daily frustrations and the promise of something better.

By framing change as a journey toward a more efficient, fulfilling way of working, teams can see themselves in the story and feel more engaged in the process.

2. Stories Create a Shared Language for Uncertainty

Even without realizing it, leaders naturally use storytelling and metaphors to describe business challenges:

“We’re navigating uncharted waters.”

“We need to turn the ship around.”

“We’re at a crossroads.”

“This feels like climbing a mountain.”

These metaphors help teams orient themselves in times of change, giving them a way to describe uncertainty and complexity. But in my work with organizations, I’ve taken this a step further. I no longer rely on the simplified Change Curve to explain transformation. Instead, I use the Change Leadership Map—a structured visual framework that helps teams:

  • Diagnose where they and their stakeholders are in the change journey
  • Discuss challenges in a way that resonates with real experiences
  • Determine together how to move forward with clarity and confidence

By replacing abstract models with a story-driven map, the Change Leadership Map harnesses the power of storytelling to make the way organizations talk about change more relatable, actionable, and engaging.

3. Storytelling Fosters Psychological Safety

A common assumption is that the greatest barrier to change is resistance. However, resistance is not the root problem, but a symptom of it. The real challenge is

About openness, and creating a space where people feel safe to talk about the real issues. Employees often hold back concerns because they:

  • Fear being perceived as negative, resistant, or uninformed
  • Feel they have no control over the change
  • Aren’t sure how to express uncertainty in a way that won’t be dismissed

Harvard Business School professor Dr. Amy Edmondson’s research on psychological safety found that teams with high psychological safety are more engaged, adaptable, and resilient—but many organizations fail to cultivate this environment during change.

That’s why the Change Leadership Map was designed using metaphors and storytelling. Instead of forcing employees into uncomfortable direct confrontation about their concerns, it invites them into a structured, non-threatening dialogue.

For example, rather than an employee saying:

“I think this initiative is moving too fast, and I feel overwhelmed.”

They might instead feel more comfortable saying:

“I feel like my team is stuck in Confusion Rapids, as too many things are shifting at once, and we’re struggling to keep up.”

This shift removes personal blame or defensiveness and allows for a constructive conversation about real concerns rather than surface-level compliance.

When organizations integrate storytelling into their change approach, they move from silencing discomfort to surfacing valuable insights. Instead of resistance, they create genuine engagement, alignment, and shared anticipation about the journey ahead.