In the 22 years since John Kotter wrote his seminal book Leading Change, organizations have spent billions of dollars on operational transformations to achieve sustainable business improvements.
And yet, about two thirds of these initiatives seem destined to fail. Indeed, the failure rate has remained steady from 1996, when Mr Kotter published his work, to 2015, when a McKinsey Global Institute survey found similar results. Given our track record of facilitating program that are in the successful minority, and the awards we have helped our clients win, we were invited by The European to write an article that examined why some programs succeed while others fail.