Why Your Change Initiatives Keep Failing

Leaders love talking about driving change. It's a résumé virtue—nobody gets promoted for keeping things stable. But there's a problem most won't admit: they're impatient, and impatience kills change efforts.

Change takes both time and effort. More effort can shorten the timeline a bit, but less than most people hope. And the opposite approach—less effort, more time—feels wrong when everyone's watching the quarterly numbers.

Here's what actually happens in large organisations.

Small tactical changes (tweaking a subprocess) can happen in days. Changing company culture takes years. Most change efforts land somewhere in between—weeks to months, depending on scope and complexity.

The real issue is that leaders consistently underestimate the delays and distortions that happen when something new moves through an organisation. A message that seemed clear and simple in the leadership meeting arrives at the front line looking different. It took longer to get there than expected. And the meaning shifted along the way.

Then it gets worse. Leadership launches the next change before the previous one has actually landed. The result: nothing ever stabilises at the edges of the organisation. People learn to wait out each new initiative because another one is always coming.

The fix isn't complicated. It's just uncomfortable.

Instead of moving to the next thing, stay on the current thing. Communicate it relentlessly. Communicate it consistently—100% consistently, not 90%. Make sure people actually understand it and are working with it before you announce anything new.

This requires patience. It requires saying the same thing in the same way, over and over, long past the point where you're bored of hearing yourself say it.

Whether companies actually hire and reward leaders for patience and consistency is a fair question. My guess is they don't, not really. They reward visible action. Starting things feels like progress. Seeing things through is less glamorous.

But if your change efforts keep stalling halfway through the organisation, the problem probably isn't your people. It's your timing.