When a change effort succeeds or fails, the deciding factor is rarely the quality of the plan. Plans are usually fine. What separates transformations that endure from those that fade is leadership — what leaders actually do, and just as importantly, what they fail to do. In this conversation I look closely at that part, because it is the variable most often discussed and least often acted upon.
The uncomfortable truth is that leadership in change is not delegable. You can outsource the project plan, the communications, even the facilitation — but you cannot outsource the credibility that comes from leaders visibly changing their own behavior. People watch what leaders do far more than they listen to what leaders say. A single inconsistency between the message and the leader’s behavior can quietly undo months of careful communication.
I also talk about presence and persistence. Change is uncomfortable, and the natural temptation for leaders is to launch it and then move on to the next priority. But transformations live or die in the long middle, after the excitement fades and before the results arrive. Leaders who keep showing up in that period — holding the direction, acknowledging the difficulty, and protecting the effort from competing pressures — are the ones whose change actually sticks.
It is a short, candid take on the part leaders genuinely play. Listen via the link below, and afterwards ask the most useful question I know in this work: in the change you are leading right now, what is your own behavior reinforcing — the new way, or the old one?
When change succeeds or fails, the difference is rarely the plan — it is leadership.
The most useful habit I can offer is a weekly self-check: where did my behavior this week reinforce the old way, and where the new? Leaders rarely undermine change deliberately; they do it through small, unnoticed reversions under pressure. Catching those early — and correcting them visibly — does more for a transformation than any amount of communication.
It also models the exact behavior the change requires: the willingness to look honestly at oneself and adjust. When people see leaders holding themselves to that standard, the change stops feeling like something done to them and starts feeling like something everyone, including the top, is genuinely part of.
Listen to the episode →