The corporate world is littered with the skeletons of failed change initiatives. After 20+ years in this field, I’ve watched organizations pour millions into meticulously planned transformations only to wonder why employees never truly embraced them and scratch their heads about how to maintain positive momentum. The answer lies in a fundamental misconception: treating change as a project to be managed rather than a journey to be led.

The False Dichotomy We Need to Abandon

To be brutally honest, traditional models have created an artificial divide between change management and project management that serves neither purpose effectively. Project managers focus on delivering outputs (on time, on budget), while change managers are expected to somehow magically ensure adoption.

This siloed approach is one of the many reasons behind the enduring 70% failure rate of transformation efforts.

The Project Initiation Problem No One Talks About

Here’s the uncomfortable truth most leaders don’t like to acknowledge: many initiatives are doomed before they even begin. Organizations routinely greenlight projects without conducting proper due diligence on change readiness, resource availability, or organizational capability.

The result? A portfolio bloated with:

• Vanity projects that should have never left the drawing board
• “Must-have” initiatives shoehorned onto teams already at capacity
• Competing priorities that fragment organizational focus and energy

When organizations indiscriminately launch initiatives without strategic alignment, is it any wonder so many fail? True change leadership begins long before project kickoff—it starts with the courage to say “no” to the wrong initiatives and “not yet” to the right ones at the wrong time.

Change Leadership Beyond Project Execution

Change leadership transcends both the mechanical aspects of project delivery and the soft skills of traditional change management. It requires the strategic vision to:

• Ruthlessly prioritize initiatives based on genuine organizational need
• Assess organizational capacity before committing resources
• Create breathing room for teams to absorb and integrate changes
• Build coalitions of support before implementation begins

While project managers focus on deliverables, timelines and budgets, change leaders focus on readiness, capacity, and sustainable transformation.

Reframing Our Approach to Transformation

The organizations consistently succeeding at change have abandoned not just the notion that you can simply “manage” people through change, but also the belief that more initiatives equals more progress. Instead, they embrace a model where:

Change leadership establishes the preconditions for success—rigorously evaluating initiatives, aligning stakeholders, and creating the necessary environment for change to flourish.

Project management then executes within this fertile context, where resources are available, priorities are clear, and organizational fatigue has been accounted for.

A New Path Forward

The most progressive organizations are creating transformation offices that evaluate all potential initiatives through the lens of organizational capacity and change saturation. They understand that attempting five initiatives with full commitment yields better results than pursuing fifteen with fragmented attention.

This approach requires uncomfortable conversations about what not to do, a decision many leaders tend to avoid. But this decision-making capacity is what separates true change leaders from mere project sponsors.

The Cost of Maintaining the Status Quo

Is your organization suffering from initiative overload? Are you launching projects without assessing whether your people have the bandwidth to absorb them? Is your transformation portfolio filled with pet projects that lack strategic alignment?

The financial implications of this approach are staggering and rarely considered. Here are three perspectives that drive the message home:

• According to the Project Management Institute, “Organizations waste $97 million for every $1 billion invested in projects due to poor project performance.” Source: PMI
• Companies with high employee ratings on change effectiveness achieve 264% more revenue growth compared to companies with below-average change effectiveness. Source: WTW
• According to Leadership IQ, 31% of CEOs get fired for poor change management. Source: Leadership IQ 
  

Rewriting the Narrative

At Changentum, we don’t “manage” resistance. We partner with leaders to replace outdated change management with human-centered change leadership. Our approach replaces top-down mandates with dialogue, equips teams to lead from every seat, and turns sceptics into advocates.

No blame. No jargon. Just results.