HBR's 10 Must Reads on Change Management, Vol. 2 (with bonus article "Accelerate!" by John P. Kotter)

What Everyone Gets Wrong About Change Management

by N. Anand and Jean-Louis Barsoux

CORPORATE TRANSFORMATIONS still have a miserable success rate, even though scholars and consultants have significantly improved our understanding of how they work. Studies consistently report that about three-quarters of change efforts flop—either they fail to deliver the anticipated benefits or they are abandoned entirely.

Because flawed implementation is most often blamed for such failures, organizations have focused on improving execution. They have embraced the idea that transformation is a process with key stages that must be carefully managed and levers that must be pulled—indeed, expressions such as “burning platform,” “guiding coalition,” and “quick ...