A false start is a failure of adoption. Leaders launch a change initiative, but the organization only partially engages because it fails to secure the requisite sponsorship, alignment, urgency and energy-producing early wins. People treat the initiative as the flavor-of-the-month and stay in their old routines. Rather than achieving lift off, the effort stalls, fades, then fails.

False starts are common, which signals that their underlying causes are likely preventable. I’ve conducted hundreds of postmortem analyses with change teams that committed false starts and uncovered several clear patterns in the failures. Here are six interweaving factors that commonly result in false starts:

1. MORAL AUTHORITY GAP. Lack of early adoption results from a lack of moral authority: trusted, values-based leadership that converts compliance into conviction. If employees don’t trust the leader, they won’t break camp and leave the status quo.

2. UNDERAPPRECIATING A FOSSILIZED STATUS QUO. Leaders grossly underestimate the resilience of a fossilized status quo. The structural inertia lodged in equilibrium naturally resists change and preserves existing structures, procedures, routines and sunk investments.

3. UNCLEAR OR UNCOMMUNICATED CASE FOR CHANGE. Change must always be justified based on one or a combination of three drivers: increasing value, reducing cost or meeting safety requirements. Without a case for change stronger than doing nothing, there is little urgency to spur people into action. This also means contextualizing the change based on organizational history, politics, path dependence and market timing.

4. PERVERSE INCENTIVES. Middle managers, often the make-or-break layer, may resist if their incentives remain tied to old priorities.

5. OVERHASTY LAUNCH. Executives sometimes rush into change without preparation, mistaking recklessness for healthy urgency. They simply don’t have an appropriately detailed execution plan. This often reflects a lack of shared belief in the need for change, an appropriate path for change or the capability to implement the change.

6. NEGLECT OF THE HUMAN TRANSITION. Leaders often focus on what is changing but overlook who must change. They underestimate employees’ psychological reactions to what might appear to them to be a change in structure only.

The common denominator across false starts is not a lack of technical merit but rather a lack of support that spreads through social systems. Think about what a change initiative lacks at the time of launch: Every new initiative has a credibility problem until it generates tangible results; an ambiguity problem until clarity emerges; an energy problem until there is critical mass; and a communication problem until there is shared understanding.

HOW TO AVOID A FALSE START

If these are the patterns of a false start, how do you prevent them? First, review the six factors above and solve for each one. Then consider four field-tested recommendations that I’ve identified in working with organizations:

DO THE AWFUL TRIAGE

If strategy is the deliberate reduction of alternatives, change is the execution of the ones left standing. Remember, change capacity is a finite resource that must be spread across the entire change agenda. That means doing some things in parallel and other things in sequence. It most certainly means saying no to a host of potential initiatives.

If you have an overly aggressive change agenda, de-fatigue your system by making the painful trade-offs that will bring you back to traction and success.

CONDUCT A “DO-NOTHING” ANALYSIS

For the initiatives that make the first triage cut, move them to a second cut: a “do-nothing” analysis. This means bringing together all relevant stakeholders — including active and potential detractors — and asking: “Do we really need to change or should we do nothing?” The answer might not be obvious. Perhaps doing nothing really is the better option. Or perhaps “wait and see” is really “wait and sink.” Doing nothing is not neutral. It’s a choice. And that choice has consequences, some predictable, some not. Most resistance to change isn’t about logic but rather loss aversion.

In my experience, leaders tend to underestimate the cost of inaction. But when you take time to map it out, you often find something very different. The leader’s job is to see the costs of not changing clearly. Sometimes, the greatest threat to your organization’s future is the belief that doing nothing is harmless. A do-nothing analysis can surface those blind spots.

BUILD A GUIDING COALITION EARLY

A coalition is a group of stakeholders who will support and help you lead the change. Coalitions scale influence and help you through the implementation process.

Assemble your coalition as early as possible. Identify senior leaders, experts, partners, opinion leaders and respected managers who will support the effort and then create a strategy to recruit each one. When you set out to build a guiding coalition, think through how they will help you win the first race of adoption:

1. CHOOSE PEOPLE WITH A MIX OF AUTHORITY, INFLUENCE, EXPERTISE AND RELATIONSHIPS. You need credibility in the room and in the field.

2. INVOLVE THEM EARLY. Let them help refine the change map, not just implement it. This creates ownership.

3. BE TRANSPARENT ABOUT THEIR ROLE. They’re not a ceremonial group; they’re the ones making it happen.

4. EQUIP AND EMPOWER THEM. Give them the vision, messaging, resources and support they need to influence others.

5. LISTEN TO THEM. Implementing change will include experimentation. Their feedback isn’t a detour but data to help you adapt.

PLAN AND CREATE EARLY WINS

Once you begin implementing the change initiative, people start watching for proof. They look around for evidence that the change is working. I call this the span of uncertainty: the invisible countdown clock between launch and the first real signs of progress. It’s the length of time people will give discretionary effort to a change without seeing actual evidence that it’s working. It varies by person, team and organization, but it always has an expiration date. Break the bigger milestones into concrete, visible and symbolically important small wins along the way that you can achieve, communicate and celebrate. This will create sustainable momentum and make backsliding less likely.

A false start doesn’t just delay progress; it erodes credibility, consumes scarce change capacity and teaches the organization to wage a war of attrition by waiting out the next pronouncement. Ultimately, you have to manage risk while balancing adoption with speed. Because they trade off against each other, you may have to pull from speed to gain adoption and pull from adoption to gain speed. Just make sure you win the adoption race and avoid a false start.

“Chaotic.” “Disruptive.” “Uncontrollable.” “Defeating.”

The words we hear leaders use to describe change today are troubling. While executives are accustomed to leading change in complex environments, we’re seeing even experienced leaders struggling. The typical approach of inspiring employees with an aspirational vision of the future is no longer working.

The reason is because change itself keeps changing in ways that cannot be fully controlled by leaders or their organizations. At Gartner we see this as the convergence of four factors:

—Not only is there a larger volume of change, but changes are stacked, with one happening on top of another.

—Not only are changes happening faster, they’re also continuous without a clear start or end date.

—Not only are changes larger in scale, they also have multiple interdependencies, such as one technology implementation failing to properly integrate with another.

—Not only are changes unpredictable, they’re externally driven, with impacts coming from all sides: technology, politics, economic uncertainty, societal trends and more.

We call this “ungovernable change,” and in this environment, leaders are struggling to drive needed transformation. A March 2025 Gartner survey of more than 980 global leaders found that only 32% of mid- to senior-level leaders were able to implement their last change initiative on time while maintaining employee engagement and performance.

Leaders are managing ungovernable change at a time when their employees are increasingly skeptical of their efforts: 79% of the 2,900 global employees surveyed by Gartner in April 2025 don’t trust their organization’s ability to change effectively. The majority believe that their organization has made poor change decisions in the past and are unlikely to be successful in the future.

Amid this distrust, Gartner research found that the most successful leaders prepare employees to navigate ungovernable change by routinizing change — treating it as an everyday business process. Leaders who routinize change acknowledge constant transformation is the norm. They embrace an ongoing responsibility to equip employees with well-practiced change skills that feel second nature and the right mindset they need to embrace ongoing change.

Successfully routinizing change means adopting the following three strategies:

COMMUNICATE THAT CHANGE IS A JOURNEY, NOT A DESTINATION.

Traditionally, leaders have looked to inspire change by focusing on the desired outcome and the benefits it will bring. But employees who don’t trust the organization’s ability to change no longer believe that this vision will become reality.

Today’s successful change leaders acknowledge that transformation is a journey without a clear path — or even a fixed destination. Instead of promoting the benefits of changing, they create urgency by highlighting the risks of inaction. They reinforce the value of making progress by clarifying that consistent small wins on the change journey are the metric of success.

Finally, they share transparently but focus communications to maximize employees’ ability to absorb information.

ENABLE CHANGE-READY EMPLOYEES, NOT CHANGE ENTHUSIASM.

Leaders typically encourage change by building enthusiasm and providing support, such as tools and resources, for each initiative. However, treating change as a special occasion and building excitement for an individual event does not align with today’s reality.

Enabling employees to thrive in ungovernable change is all about helping them build the right mindset and practice change skills until they are second nature. This helps them become ready to embrace any change at all times.

Navigating change is an emotional journey. While historically leaders may have tried to help employees overcome discomfort by promising that benefits will outweigh costs, in the era of ungovernable change, employees need to become comfortable with discomfort. This requires leaders to help employees regulate their emotions.

A large pharmaceutical company wanted to help their employees understand the source of their negative responses to change. They developed a tool for leaders, built around existing frameworks, such as David Rock’s SCARF model, to help them understand and respond to employee concerns about change. For example, a leader could use this tool to discover that an employee’s pushback on a certain process automation isn’t really about whether the new process is effective or not; the employee is actually worried that their expertise will no longer be valuable. Uncovering this allows the leader to provide reassurance, such as, “We will still count on your expertise to help us improve the new process.” The new process may still be uncomfortable for that employee. But when they understand why they feel uncomfortable, they’re more likely to be able to move forward with change despite their discomfort.

Once employees are willing to move forward with change, they also need the skills to adapt. Leaders who routinize change build what we call “change reflexes.” These are core skills that are applicable to multiple change scenarios and have been practiced with enough repetition that they become intuitive.

Gartner research has identified six core change reflexes:

—Being open to new experiences

—Effectively managing time

—Understanding the context in which the business operates

—Using technology effectively

—Working well with anyone, regardless of prior experience

—Regulating emotions

The best time to practice and build these change reflexes is in the course of everyday work. For example, a financial services company helps leaders identify coaching opportunities — what they call “micro-moments of change” — tasks and activities that resemble employees’ experiences during significant changes. These micro-moments occur frequently enough for regular practice under less stressful conditions, creating the right conditions for building change reflexes.

FORESEE MULTIPLE POSSIBLE SCENARIOS, NOT JUST THE CURRENT CHANGE.

Change leaders know to expect the unexpected, but leaders who routinize change take this foresight one step further. They don’t just use their business acumen and visionary thinking to scenario plan; they empower employees to analyze and prepare for how likely future scenarios would impact the team.

To help leaders build their team’s foresight and business acumen, one financial services organization gives leaders a context-sensing exercise to use with their teams. Leaders first identify potential external triggers, such as artificial intelligence or regulation, that may cause a change for the organization. Next, they assign employees to learn research the trigger and teach the team about what they learn. As a group, the team discusses likely future scenarios and the skills they’ll need to respond. Over time, this helps employees more intuitively understand changes that may be coming and the skills they need to build to help them adopt a wide variety of future changes.

Normalizing ongoing change and building employees’ change reflexes means that when change changes — as is inevitable during this era of ungovernable change — employees will have a more intuitive understanding of what to do next.

By investing in employees’ change reflexes, leaders can better prepare their organizations for a future of ungovernable change, seeing change not as chaotic, disruptive, uncontrollable or defeating, but rather as a core capability that can be mastered like any other.

Metaphors are based on principles of storytelling but take less time to explain and develop than a full narrative. A metaphor can act as a shortcut bridge, getting people across the chasm of complexity to clarity faster.

In fast-paced, high-stakes transformation efforts, strategic metaphors aren’t fluff — they’re focused interventions that calm the brain, coordinate energy and clarify direction. Leaders coping with ambiguity must develop a mental model of how the environment works (i.e., “sensemaking”) and communicate this vision to gain support (i.e., “sensegiving”), with metaphor development serving as a critical stage in the process. Research confirms that metaphors reduce uncertainty about abstract concepts, with the effects particularly pronounced when ambiguity is high.

Metaphors provide practical tools for organizational change when time pressure and resistance may be high. Strategic metaphors create what Karl Weick calls “cognitive maps,” helping people categorize competitors, understand resources and identify cause-and-effect relationships within a single, memorable framework.

The right metaphor doesn’t just describe the journey — it defines it. It signals what matters, who we’re becoming and how we’ll get there — together. Crafting a strategic metaphor is not a creative indulgence; it’s a leadership act.

To determine the right type of strategic metaphor to use in your own change initiative, ask yourself the following questions:

1. WHICH THREAT AM I CALMING?

For example, if status is the concern, choose metaphors that elevate importance — like “elite forces,” “master craftspeople,” or “the A-Team.”

2. IS THIS KNOWN OR UNKNOWN TERRAIN?

For familiar challenges, use metaphors that acknowledge experience while pointing toward elevated performance — like “championship level” for experienced teams. For example: “We’re moving from varsity to championship level — same game, higher stakes, greater precision.” For unfamiliar territory, use exploration metaphors that emphasize discovery and adventure. For example: “We’re pioneers mapping new territory — every challenge we solve creates the path for others to follow.”

3. WILL THE METAPHOR TRAVEL?

Test whether your metaphor works across teams, levels and cultures. The best strategic metaphors are those that middle managers can easily translate without losing emotional impact. Universal concepts like competition (“championship team”), exploration (“pioneers”) and healing (“diagnosing,” “prescribing solutions”) travel better than culture-specific references like “hitting it out of the park” (baseball-specific) or “punt the ball” (American football–specific). One CEO I advised was fond of using a golfing handicap as a metaphor, which was understood only by those who played golf.

4. IS IT EASY TO RECALL AND SHARE?

Transformation already puts a strain on people’s cognitive and emotional resources, and expecting employees to recall complex acronyms or slick consulting frameworks does not help. Keep it simple. Examples of memorable metaphors might be a lighthouse (guiding others), bridge builders (connecting teams) or gardeners (nurturing growth).

In a world where strategy is often forgotten before the slides fade from the screen, strategic metaphors can be your leadership shortcut to memory, meaning and momentum. They don’t just help people understand change — they help them feel it, all while providing a cognitive map that helps address the neurological threats that can emerge with change.

As you plan your next transformation, don’t just ask, “What’s our strategy?” Ask, “What metaphor will make people want to carry our strategy forward?”

We are living through an era in which the pace of socioeconomic trends, climate change and technological revolutions has dramatically increased.

To keep up, business leaders are attempting the most aggressive transformation agenda in history, making fundamental changes in either what they are doing or how they are doing it.

Unfortunately, the mere act of attempting transformation doesn’t guarantee success. It’s estimated that 70% of all change initiatives fail.

EFFICIENCY VS. DESIGNED SIMPLICITY

The vast majority of organizations today attempt transformation by focusing on efficiency. Business leaders taking this approach prioritize speed at every turn, trying to implement transformed workflows — and thereby the transformation itself — as quickly as possible to begin extracting value sooner to keep up with the pace of change they are confronting.

We identified that organizations following this approach:

Deploy transformed workflows quickly and iterate improvements to fix any workflow gaps after the launch.

Empower and expect staff to leverage experience and judgment to overcome any ambiguity that arises in these transformed workflows.

Focus on creating standardized, uniform processes.

However, our research found that functions that perfect the efficiency-based approach saw their transformation success increase by just 5%. By contrast, organizations that used an approach that we’ve dubbed “designed simplicity” increase their transformation success by 42%.

WHAT IS DESIGNED SIMPLICITY?

We define designed simplicity as a user experience–based approach to business process management that seeks to reduce complexity by designing procedures, tools and stakeholder interactions that are easy for users to understand and execute.

DESIGNED SIMPLICITY FOCUSES ON THE TRANSFORMATION’S ROI, NOT ITS FINISH LINE.

The efficiency approach aims to reduce the time between the decision to transform and the implementation of the transformation, and by doing so minimize time-to-ROI.

While both time-to-ROI and ROI matter, the latter matters much more. In the tradeoff between speed and quality, the efficiency approach gets the balance wrong, and designed simplicity gets it right.

TRANSFORMED WORKFLOWS ARE MUCH MORE COMPLETE WHEN DEPLOYED.

To get to ROI as fast as possible, efficiency-focused organizations typically adopt minimum viable workflows (i.e., incomplete workflows). This means efficiency-focused leaders are, in effect, charging staff with the task of making an incomplete transformation work.

Conversely, with designed simplicity, new and revised workflows don’t get deployed until they are complete, meaning there are no gaps or ambiguities staff have to figure out on their own.

STAFF’S USER EXPERIENCE AND INPUT ARE A PRIORITY.

The efficiency-based approach relies on staff to fill in the gaps in incomplete workflows.

By contrast, the goal of the designed simplicity approach is to simplify workflows in advance, achieving a positive user experience for the staff.

ALL REASONABLE SCENARIOS ARE PLANNED FOR.

In the race to design minimum viable workflows as part of the efficiency approach, the result tends to be one-size-fits-all outputs that address only the ideal and most common scenarios staff will find themselves in.

With designed simplicity, time and energy is spent on comprehensive completeness up front. Situational ambiguity is engineered out of the process by developing workflows that cover all reasonably foreseeable situations.

Designed simplicity offers a fundamentally new approach to achieving transformation success. By embedding these principles, business leaders can ensure that their transformations are not just completed but are successful in delivering sustained value and strategic advantage for their organizations.

If you’re responsible for leading a team through substantial transformation and are seeing signs of fatigue, here are some ways you can ensure you aren’t the one causing it.

INVESTIGATE YOUR MOTIVATION FOR THE CHANGE

New research shows that many large-scale change initiatives are born not of strategic relevance or competitive importance but rather from a leader’s need to stave off their own anxiety about performance challenges. They refer to this as “defensive organizing.”

If you’re sponsoring change to address some stubborn performance challenge and suddenly find yourself in a groundswell of enthusiasm for an idea that feels like a silver bullet, don’t get excited and relieved — get suspicious and pause the process. Acknowledge that your motivation for fueling such enthusiasm may well be to disperse your anxiety among more people, thus avoiding, not resolving, the real performance challenge.

CONFRONT YOUR DENIAL AND LIMITATIONS

Before launching into some breakthrough idea, reflect long and hard about what internal or external challenges you may be avoiding. And further, look deep within yourself to be sure you aren’t averting a self-honest acknowledgement of your own limitations.

SURFACE PEOPLE’S HONEST FEELINGS ABOUT THE CHANGE, INCLUDING YOUR OWN

Without the ability to be honest, your organization is inculcating the greatest form of change fatigue: the cognitive dissonance created by having to hide their true feelings while feigning positive regard for change. It’s exhausting and ultimately gives way to the final phase of defensive organization: resentment.

At the outset of any major change, I have my clients set stringent ground rules about how they will be completely candid with one another, define what criteria they will use to objectively measure progress, and how they will gather wide swathes of opinions about risks from those lower in the organization.

NAME WHAT YOU CAN’T CONTROL

Much of the anxiety fueling defensive organizing comes from the many factors outside the control of leaders trying to stave off disaster or capitalize on market opportunities. The crescendo of enthusiasm for new ideas is largely born from the illusion that if leaders join forces, they can conquer the challenge or opportunity — regardless of precedence, the high degree of uncertainty, and uncontrollable dynamics.

One of the greatest culprits in the failure of strategic change is the untested assumptions that are never surfaced and interrogated. At the start of large-scale strategic change, I have my clients write down all the assumptions they’re making about the prospects of success, failure, each other’s capabilities, the organization’s capacity to execute, and the future outcomes they want from the investments. Naming the truth of their collective limitations frees leaders to focus on what they can and should control.

Accept that the chance to introduce change to your team, department, or enterprise is a privilege. Set the example of admitting your angst about the unknown and what you hope you and your team can learn together, making it safe for them to grow and challenge you along the way. Organize change that way, and you’ll infuse those you lead with energy, not fatigue.

When a major U.S.-based financial institution needed help with an organization-wide transformation, they turned to Debora, a seasoned executive coach and change consultant. The institution was grappling with technological disruption, shifting customer expectations, and mounting regulatory pressures, and they viewed their transformation program as the natural solution to these challenges.

Upon arrival, Debora spent time talking with employees across all levels, many of whom described their post-transformation workplace in a negative light, using such terms as “war room” and “Hunger Games.” The findings from a recent company pulse survey reinforced what she had heard: Although employees understood why change was needed, they felt they were already stretched too thin to take on any new initiatives.

Debora had arrived ready to coordinate initiatives across the organization’s existing transformation program. But she soon realized that a more-fundamental change was in order: The company’s program needed a set of strategies that could be tailored to each department’s specific challenges and constraints. Without such tailoring, even sound transformation initiatives might falter or backfire.

We are H.R. strategy advisers and professors who have studied transformations across industries for more than 15 years, and we have designed a five-step process to drive successful transformation initiatives. In this article, we’ll briefly sum up the process.

ALIGNING STRATEGIES AND MOTIVATION STYLES

Many leaders attempting transformation initiatives fail in three ways. First, they don’t clearly define the type of change their organization or departments are facing, which means they can’t clearly define their specific objectives. Second, they often apply a one-size-fits-all strategy to their situation and don’t assess what sort of balance it calls for between exploration (innovating and risk-taking) and exploitation (optimizing existing processes). And third, they don’t consider who will drive the change and how employees’ differing skills and readiness for change will affect success.

Our research has revealed that underlying these failures lies a crucial factor: Motivation styles are the hidden drivers of change initiatives. Building on the work of Heidi Grant and E. Tory Higgins and their article “Do You Play to Win — or to Not Lose?” we’ve identified three key styles: Play to Win (thriving on growth and opportunity), Play Not to Lose (valuing stability and caution) and Balanced (seeking the middle ground). These styles aren’t merely about skills — they reflect how employees are inherently wired for change.

Aligning change strategies with employee motivation styles is crucial for success.

1. DIAGNOSE YOUR CHANGE TYPE.

Before launching a change initiative, determine whether you need to focus on exploration or exploitation. Different change types require different adaptive behaviors.

Some departments need a strategy of exploration (especially those facing digital disruptions, which demand innovation), while others needed one of exploitation (especially those hoping to optimize existing processes to meet regulations and deliver quality service).

For each department, start by using a decision tree to lay out your needs for radical and incremental change. Next, explore the potential risks of focusing solely on exploration or exploitation for each change theme. This process helps reveal blind spots and guides you toward a balanced, tailored approach.

2. MAP MOTIVATIONAL STYLES.

With your change type identified, the next step is to map out your employees’ motivational styles. When we did this at Debora’s financial institution, we found the following overall distribution: Play to Win (45%), Play Not to Lose (40%) and Balancers (15%).

When working on this task, pay close attention to how team members approach tasks and challenges. Do they focus on potential gains, moving quickly toward solutions? Or do they prioritize avoiding mistakes, taking a more cautious, methodical approach?

3. MATCH MOTIVATIONS TO INITIATIVES.

With a clear understanding of both your change type and the motivational styles of the employees on your teams, you can now strategically assign employees to projects that align with their natural tendencies.

In the case of Debora’s financial institution, we matched Play to Win employees with exploratory projects that involved the development of new financial products, and we matched Play Not to Lose employees with projects focused on regulatory compliance and risk management. Not surprisingly, we placed Balancers in roles that required both innovation and careful execution.

4. TAILOR YOUR CHANGE MESSAGING.

Effective communication about change also isn’t one-size-fits-all. Tailor it to resonate with different motivational styles. At Debora’s financial institution, we coached leaders to frame changes differently across departments, depending on their dominant styles. Examples include: “With this new platform, we’ll lead the market by offering innovative services and products that our competitors can’t match, positioning us as a front-runner in the industry” (Play to Win); “If we don’t implement these changes, we risk falling out of compliance, losing our trusted position with regulators and clients and endangering our reputation and long-term security” (Play Not to Lose); “This transformation will enable us to innovate and stay competitive, while also maintaining the operational security and regulatory compliance that we depend on” (Balancers).

5. ENCOURAGE A PARADOX MINDSET.

Even with the best alignment between change types and motivational styles, organizations will inevitably face situations where contradictory goals must be pursued simultaneously. Encouraging a paradox mindset — so that employees get comfortable in that zone of contradiction — is crucial for sustained adaptability.

Debora applied this approach in the customer experience division of the financial institution she was working with, which needed to innovate to improve customer relationships but also had to implement strict cost controls. She was able to foster a paradox mindset in the division by designing projects that balanced opposing objectives — and by then encouraging open discussions about the inherent tensions that arise. Leaders should model this approach, navigating competing demands transparently. Regular team reflections on these practices reinforce the mindset across the organization.

For years, organizations have chased the perfect transformation plan, yet often they keep failing. The pattern is clear: Well-intentioned change initiatives fail when organizations rush into one-size-fits-all transformations without understanding who they’re asking to change and why. Our research and Debora’s implementation of our five-step process show that success comes from understanding exactly what type of change each department needs and how their employees are wired to deliver it. It is not about the perfect strategy but about making change fit your people, who are the ones who will make it happen.