The Change You Keep Avoiding Is the One That Matters Most

Every organization has at least one change initiative that launched with genuine alignment, showed up on the agenda for a few months and then either quietly disappeared or continued to be discussed without ever actually moving. McKinsey’s research suggests that roughly 70 percent of organizational change efforts fail to achieve their intended goals. I have watched this play out for nearly 30 years as an operator, more recently as a CEO and as an executive coach working with senior leaders across industries. The typical explanation is timing, budget, resources or shifting market conditions. Those are real factors, but there is usually something else going on that has very little to do with the organization and a great deal to do with the person leading it.

Early in my tenure as a CEO, I delayed decisions in an effort to preserve acceptance. I held on to models and people longer than I should have because stability felt safer than clarity, and because I confused my own discomfort with organizational readiness. Looking back, some of the most important decisions I made as a leader were disruptive ones, including a carve-out transaction, that were uncomfortable and genuinely hard on people I cared about. But staying still when change was needed would have been the greater risk every single time.

When I talk to other leaders, I see the same patterns repeating because the forces that slow them down are deeply human and easy to rationalize. The first is straightforward delay, where leaders who know a change is necessary keep finding reasons to wait for one more quarter of data or one more chance for the situation to resolve itself. The cost of delay does not show up on the P&L, but it compounds every week. The second is activity that gets mistaken for progress, where meetings are happening and updates are being shared but nothing has fundamentally changed. The leader is managing the appearance of movement without forcing the uncomfortable decisions that make change real. The third is leading from a playbook that no longer fits. I worked alongside a founder for nearly 15 years before stepping into the CEO role. His leadership worked because it was authentic to who he was. Honoring his legacy did not require replication. It required leading in a way that was authentic to me while holding the same values with equal seriousness. That distinction took me years to internalize.

When change stalls, it is not a neutral experience for the people inside the organization. Uncertainty lingers longer than leaders realize, and good people start noticing. Small frustrations accumulate until people stop seeing solutions and only see obstacles. Eventually they leave or disengage because they become convinced that anywhere else will deliver what their current company cannot. Meanwhile, while the leader believes they are being thoughtful, the team experiences it as indecision.

I recently took the Kolbe A Index, an assessment that measures how you are naturally wired to take action. My result showed a Quick Start score of eight out of 10, meaning I am strongly oriented toward initiating change and moving through uncertainty. And yet I still found myself stuck at critical points in my career. I still delayed when I should have acted and I confused activity with progress. There is also a version of this that runs in the other direction. When you are wired to initiate, you can overwhelm the organization with too many good ideas moving at once. You may have heard the story about how in Amazon’s early days, an executive warned Jeff Bezos that he had enough ideas to destroy Amazon, which taught him to release new ideas only at the pace the organization could actually execute. Whether you are stalling or sprinting, the underlying issue is a gap between what the leader sees and what the organization is actually ready to absorb. Closing that gap is the real work of leadership.

Most leaders know what needs to change. The question worth spending time on is what is keeping you from acting on what you already know. The answer almost always has more to do with the leader than it does with the organization. And the sooner you name it honestly, the sooner the change you have been circling actually begins to move.

Four Questions That Help Leaders Get Moving

Most leaders do not need more information about what should change. They need an honest conversation about why they have not acted on what they already know. These four questions usually force the kind of honesty that moves things forward.

What am I avoiding?

Every leader can answer “what needs to change” without much difficulty. The harder question is what specific decision or conversation you have been deferring and why. The answer is almost always relational. Someone will be upset, a relationship will be strained or the decision makes you feel disloyal to someone who has given you a lot. Once you name the avoidance and the reason behind it, it tends to get smaller.

The most common version of this is the tenured executive you know is not performing, but you keep finding reasons to give more time. The avoidance is often about how the rest of the organization will perceive you for letting go of someone who has been loyal to the firm. You hold out hope, you wait and then when you finally make the move, you pull back the curtain and realize the gap was worse than you thought.

What is actually moving?

This question requires real honesty. The test is whether anything has fundamentally shifted in the last 90 days. Not whether it has been discussed or planned or put on a roadmap, but whether it has actually gained momentum. If the honest answer is that nothing materially has changed, then the activity is likely serving people’s need to feel productive rather than the organization’s need to evolve.

Leadership meetings are a good example. What starts as a forum to troubleshoot obstacles and progress top initiatives gradually turned into a round of updates and “good news.” Our team was guilty of this, so we shifted to a memo strategy where good news was shared in advance and meeting time was reserved exclusively for yellow and red items. Meetings were cut in half and so much was gained.

What will not get me forward?

Something that worked well in a previous chapter is slowing things down in the current one. The difficulty is that letting go of what worked can create more uncertainty, especially when it is tied to people you respect and care about. But holding onto something simply because it used to work is not loyalty. It is comfort, and it comes at a cost that the leader is often the last person to see.

A common version of this is designing the org chart around the people you have rather than the organization you need. If you find yourself building the future structure anchored in the current state, that is a sign you are holding onto the past. Build the org chart first, then ask whether the people in those roles today are the right ones for the future.  If not, ask yourself what needs to happen to get them there or what the plan is to recruit for it.

Do the people around me know where they stand?

When change stalls, people do not experience patience from their leader. They experience uncertainty about their own future. The question is not whether you care about your people, because most leaders genuinely do. The question is whether those people have clarity about what is expected, what is changing and how what’s next impacts them. Silence from a leader, no matter how well intentioned, is rarely interpreted as thoughtfulness. It is almost always interpreted as indecision or, worse, avoidance.

A simple test: ask your direct reports if they know how you would evaluate them on a scale of one to 10 on both performance and behavior. If there is alignment, you have done your job. If not, that is on you to own. Say so, share your evaluation, and help them improve.