HBR Guide to Leading Through Change

CHAPTER 4

Six Key Levers of a Successful Organizational Transformation

by Andrew White, Michael Wheelock, Adam Canwell, and Michael Smets

Disruption used to be an exceptional event that hit an unlucky few companies—think of the old stories of Kodak, Polaroid, and BlackBerry. But in today’s complex and uncertain world, as we face challenges ranging from climate change to digitization, geopolitics to DEI, organizations must treat transformation as a core capability to master, as opposed to a one-off event.

At the same time, leaders must recognize that transformation is fraught with risk. John Kotter found in his work that 70% of organizational transformations fail, and nearly three decades later, not much has changed. Our own research, in which ...