Judith Parsons, Eddy de Waart, Leah Henderson
April 25, 2025
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The way your leaders think about change will influence how it moves through the organization – and whether it takes off at all.
Why do change efforts so often fail?
It’s well documented that many change interventions fall short of their intended impact. Despite the increase in interest and understanding of perpetual change as the new status quo, statistics continue to tell largely the same story. Around 70% of change initiatives are considered to fail – often because of a perceived lack of engagement.
“When I work with senior leaders, there is often a certain amount of disappointment that it's difficult to get change to take hold in the organization, and puzzlement as to the reasons why,” says Judith Parsons, Professor of Practice in Leadership and Management at Hult International Business School.
As an organizational development practitioner, she works with senior leaders on a diverse range of change initiatives – whether it’s the adoption of AI in healthcare systems, building whole system collaborations, or renewing organizational cultures.
Change fatigue often arises out of shifting goalposts – a reality in most sectors in one form or another. “Your change initiative might be going well, but then the priorities change – whether due to market conditions, technology, or the turnover of key people. We have to remember how much change people have been dealing with over the past 5 to 10 years and we need to be able to hear the plea that often comes from employees: ‘When can we just get on with the job?’”
And yet there are examples of organizations with a huge capacity for change – and a different story to tell.
Make or break your change agenda
Any organization’s change agenda is made or broken by recognizing three things:
The human impact of change – the emotions around change aren’t always clear.
The organization’s perspective on change – whether it’s viewed as a linear process, rather than something more complex that’s less likely to fit into a neat plan.
What true participation looks like – while being realistic about how you can involve people
The human impact of change: Can your leaders read the room?
We often underestimate people’s emotional response to change. “We know that change brings a certain amount of uncertainty, but for many people, it can provoke a much deeper-seated fear that they will not have the same value in the new way of doing things,” says Parsons.
This can also be linked to their feeling that something important to them is at stake. “Loss is an important topic in change,” says Eddy de Waart, Executive Coach at Hult Ashridge Executive Education.
Having the self-awareness to engage with these feelings in themselves is key for leaders. “You have to take yourself into account in your relationships so that you can assist other people in how they deal with disappointments or fear,” says de Waart. For leaders, this means developing an understanding of their own responses and behavior in order to better support their teams.
With this understanding, people are better placed to embody human-centered leadership, which is crucial for change. De Waart points out that people often get bogged down in progress reports for content and processes. “It’s easy to forget the relational questions: How are we doing? How are we working together? What is our expectation of each other? How do I work with you? What is happening with you because of my behaviors?”
Human-centered leadership recognizes that it’s the human beings behind the processes that are the most effective channels for change.
The organization’s perspective on change: How do your leaders approach it?
It’s important for leaders to understand whether the type of change they are working with will respond to a logical, planned approach. “Typically, leaders assume that change is a linear process with logical steps and a destination, so they create a change plan,” says Parsons.
That may work when the change is more logistical by nature – like implementing a new software system. But a lot of change is doesn’t fit that linear view. Cultural change, for example, is more nuanced and less certain. “There are many more variables in this type of change, such as history and the human dynamics that have created the culture”.
“This type of change is more likely to respond to what we describe as iterative or emergent approaches – step-by-step approaches based on small-scale experiments and learning what works or doesn’t work in practice.” It means accepting mistakes as part of the process. “You have to start by taking small experiments, learning from them, recasting the change initiative, and going on from there”.
Leaders also need to look at the evidence in front of them. “When organizations take a linear approach to change and meet resistance, they are often tempted to persist with more of the same,” says Parsons. “They can slip into a ‘try harder’ trap where they put more effort into making that change process work. The key is to learn continuously from our attempts and to ensure that we build in processes for honest conversation about what is really happening, what is working or not working, and why”.
Participative change: How can you bring people in?
Parsons highlights Myron’s Maxims as a helpful framework for working with change. “One of the maxims describes a basic truth that people are much more likely to be committed to what they have had a hand in creating,” says Parsons. “We all understand the psychology of being involved, but participation also helps to alleviate people’s fear of change”.
Of course, not every change can be shared with people, so any involvement has to be authentic and consistent. “Leaders often talk about engagement when what they really mean is compliance – they are not giving people any real agency to shape the way things are done in the future”.
Parsons supports leaders to work with generative change processes, involving people who know the issues at stake because they work with them day to day. “If you give the challenge to people actually working in that area, quite often they can point to the source of the problem and come up with the most creative and cost-effective solutions”.
This could mean engaging people in processes of different scale and complexity, from small groups to whole systems. The key is to have an internal or external partner to support design and facilitation. “People are inclined to overcomplicate design and process,” says Parsons. “Very often, if you create a good enough ‘container’ for the work to be done, people will take it a very long way in in a very short space of time”.
These processes create energy, which leaders need to be prepared for too. “Participative change may take off in ways you’re not expecting or entirely comfortable with. And, leaders can start to feel a bit redundant in the process. The key is support for leaders to manage their own discomfort”.
De Waart works with many multidisciplinary teams whose purpose is to serve as change ambassadors. “There’s a lot of focus on energizing the empowerment from within them,” says de Waart. “It is very important that the ownership of the change is with them – not at the Board of Directors. A group itself can have an enormous impact on an organization.”
Team coaching can help enormously with these processes. “You can learn with each other about what is hindering us, what is helpful for us, and what in our dynamic is creating that? These are questions that we need to keep asking, because change never ends”.
As an ongoing process, keeping change alive fundamentally comes down to the way you perceive it, and the way in which you value and involve people.
Key takeaways to help change move through your organization:
1. Look at your leaders’ capabilities to lead relationally.
Focusing on people and their relationships as the most effective channels for change is the core of our human-centered approach at Hult Ashridge. Crucially, leaders need to be able to listen to, and make sense of, people’s reactions.
2. Experiential learning helps people manage uncertainty.
How they respond to experiential exercises is often indicative of what happens in their real world. Reflecting on their reactions and behaviors helps to accelerate their self-awareness.
3. Don’t fall into the pitfall of approaching change like a project.
Help to widen and reframe your leaders’ views of change away from exclusively logistical to a more iterative perspective that accepts experimentation and failure as part of the process.
4. Involve people as far as you realistically can.
Methods like participative change work can be hugely illuminating for identifying the source of challenges. Of course, it isn’t possible to involve everyone in every change, so leaders need to be realistic and upfront about that.
5. Get support – either from within or outside the organization.
“Alongside internal leaders, good organizational development consultants know how to achieve change at a scale and pace which is difficult for functional leaders,” says Parsons.
Meet the experts
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Judith Parsons
Professor of Practice in Leadership and Management at Hult International Business School.
Judith works with a wide variety of clients to design and deliver innovative and impactful leadership and change interventions.
Much of her work is focused on enabling accelerated transition to senior leadership roles. As a faculty member and researcher, she is working at the forefront of thinking about leadership growth and how leaders develop the mental models and skills that are essential for success at senior levels in organizations.
Within this field she also has a particular interest in women’s leadership and works as an advisor and developer with clients seeking to advance women’s career development and prominence within the organization.
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Eddy de Waart
Executive Coach at Hult Ashridge
Eddy joined Hult Ashridge in 2017. He is a coach for executives and teams, a psychosocial therapist, and a certified supervisor for organizational consultants and coaches.
For the EMCC The Netherlands, he is chair of the Scientific Research Committee and assessor to certify coaches.
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