Most senior teams can describe the change they want. Fewer can describe what they will stop doing to make room for it. That is where leadership starts: with choices people can see, not a set of messages they are asked to believe.
This guide sets out a practical sequence for those choices. It starts with the reason for change and ends with the evidence that new ways of working are holding.
Start with the decision, not the announcement
Before a programme has a name, it needs a clear business decision. What problem are you solving? What will be different if the change works? What are you prepared to trade off?
The familiar claim that 70 per cent of changes fail is not a useful substitute for those questions. Hughes examines the evidence behind that claim and argues that it lacks a reliable empirical basis (Hughes 2011). Define success in the context of your organisation instead.
Make the trade-offs explicit
Write down the work you will pause, the decisions you will centralise and the responsibilities you will move. An ambitious programme added to an unchanged workload is not a plan. It is a queue.
Understand what people stand to lose
People can agree with the business case and still have good reasons to question the change. Expertise, relationships, status and predictability all matter. A new operating model can put each at risk. Heifetz, Grashow and Linsky (2009) describe this as adaptive work: the losses are real, and leadership means helping people through them rather than around them. The distinction between technical problems and adaptive challenges runs through much of the literature (Heifetz 1994; Heifetz, Grashow and Linsky 2009).
Our field guide to reading the change curve looks more closely at these responses. Listen for the loss behind the objection before deciding what support is needed.
Ask three questions:
- What becomes harder for this team during the change?
- What knowledge or influence might they lose?
- Which concerns point to a genuine flaw in the plan?
Give managers something they can use
Managers are often asked to explain decisions they had little part in making. A slide pack will not close that gap. They need access to the reasoning, room to question it and a clear escalation path.
| Leadership task | A useful question | Evidence to look for |
|---|---|---|
| Set direction | What problem are we solving? | Teams describe the same intended outcome |
| Make space | What stops or slows down? | Capacity is released, not merely promised |
| Equip managers | What can they decide locally? | Decisions are made without repeated escalation |
| Follow through | What changes in daily work? | New practices hold after the launch |
Shared direction and credible communication remain central to Kotter's account of leading change (Kotter 1995). The practical issue is whether your managers can translate the direction into choices their teams understand.
Check adoption in the work itself
A launch is a milestone, not proof of adoption. Pick a small set of observable practices and check them repeatedly. Are people using the new process? Are exceptions being addressed? Has the promised outcome improved?
Avoid combining every measure into one score. A team can attend all the training and still work around the new system. Separate readiness, use and business results so you can see where support is needed.
The same principle applies to purpose, vision and values: a statement matters when it changes a decision.
Make the next leadership call
Bring the sponsor and managers together around the evidence. Keep what is working. Remove avoidable friction. Decide where the organisation needs consistency and where local judgement is appropriate.
Our forthcoming article on the decisions a change sponsor must own will examine that work in more detail.
The aim is not perfect certainty. It is a clear direction, honest feedback and decisions made soon enough to matter.