The Public Manager Magazine Article
Member Benefit
Why Do So Many Organizational Change Efforts Fail
For change to work, a leader must be able to articulate what changes are necessary in his own behavior. Then, the leader must personally—and authentically—state why it is difficult to change while modelling the desired changed behavior.
Tue Mar 03 2015
The brutal fact pointed out by Michael Beer and Nitin Nohria in their May 2000 Harvard Business Review article is that about 70 percent of all change initiatives fail. This is true, they explain, whether the efforts involve installing new technology, downsizing, restructuring, or trying to change corporate culture. The failure of leaders to challenge themselves to change, and then model the behavior they seek in others, may be a large contributor to these failures.