It’s easy to talk about change. Most senior leaders do; at conferences, in town halls, on LinkedIn. They say the right things: “We’re transforming,” “This is a strategic priority,” “We’re committed.” But when it comes to leading real, hard, disruptive change, many executives are quietly stepping back. Not visibly. Not all at once. But enough to make the difference between change that sticks and change that stalls.

This is the leadership accountability gap. It’s not just overlooked; it’s untouched. People see it. They talk about it in hushed tones. But rarely with the leader in question. Instead, it’s tolerated, rationalised, worked around.

Teams bend over backwards to compensate, cover the gaps, and keep things moving, while the very person meant to lead the change becomes the biggest risk to it. Lack of change leadership is the elephant in the boardroom, and pretending it’s not there is costing organisations far more than they realise.

The gap shows up in subtle but familiar ways. A new initiative is launched with bold fanfare, but two months in, the sponsor has “moved on to other priorities.” A leader champions a new way of working, but reverts to old behaviours when under pressure. A board mandates change, but doesn’t fund it. It’s not always about ill intent. Often, it’s about discomfort. Leading change is hard. It’s unpredictable, political, and personal. And for many leaders, it’s safer to delegate and disappear than to stay visible and vulnerable.

But no matter how brilliant your change strategy is, no matter how slick the communications or how committed the project team, if the people at the top aren’t actively owning the change—emotionally, politically, behaviourally—it will fail. Not might. Will.

Why does this happen? The reasons vary, but some patterns are clear:

• Fear of exposure: Change requires leaders to model new behaviours. If they don’t feel confident in the change themselves, they hesitate or fake it to the point of burnout.
• Loss of control or status: When change threatens the very structures that elevated a leader, they may resist it; consciously or unconsciously, even while publicly supporting it.
• Systemic Distraction: Many leaders are overwhelmed by competing “top priorities” which are either self-imposed or mandated from their higher-ups. When everything is a priority, accountability becomes an impossible game of catch up.

Closing this gap isn’t about more training or better comms. It’s about confronting the system that allows leaders to opt out of owning change, while holding others to account for delivering it. It’s about making leadership accountability visible, explicit, and non-transferable.

So what could that look like?

It means change leadership isn’t delegated to a programme manager; it sits with the executive team, day in and day out. It means building governance that exposes not just delivery risks, but leadership risks. It means asking, regularly and publicly: Where is the leadership showing up, and where is it not?

And it means one more hard truth: if you’re a senior leader and your team is struggling to make change happen, the first place to look is the mirror. Not because you’re to blame, but because you’re the one with the leverage to make or break it.

Real transformation starts with real ownership. But unless executives are willing to stand in the discomfort of change—not just sponsor it, but live it—the accountability gap will keep swallowing initiatives and creating discord.

If any of this sounds uncomfortably familiar, this may be a sign that you are ready to lead change differently. Are you?

Rewriting the Narrative

At Changentum, we don’t “manage” resistance. We partner with leaders to replace outdated change management with human-centred 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.