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Why ‘Buy-In’ is a Flawed Goal in Change Management

Why ‘Buy-In’ is a Flawed Goal in Change Management

25-04-22 | Change Leadership

When leaders announce a new strategic direction, system implementation, or organizational restructure, their first instinct is often to ask, “How do we get buy-in?” This question is so embedded in corporate language that we rarely question it. However, if you’re planning a change and thinking about how to “get buy-in,” you’re already solving the wrong problem.

The language of “buy-in” actually implies that someone is selling and someone else is being sold to. This transactional framing positions change as something conceived by a select few that must now be marketed to everyone else. The big decisions have already been made, and now you’re asking people to get on board. The result is a subtle but powerful message: “This isn’t your idea, this isn’t your change, but we need you to act upon it.” And unintentionally, a dynamic of resistance has been activated, not because people oppose the change itself, but because they’re reacting to being pushed into compliance. And compliance, unlike commitment, vanishes the moment attention shifts elsewhere.

If a change initiative really matters, and you want it to last, then the people affected by it should have had a hand in shaping it. This isn’t about making everyone happy or building by committee; it’s about involving people early enough that they see their fingerprints on what’s coming. When that happens, you don’t need buy-in. You get ownership.

The Illusion of Persuasion

By the time most organisations are chasing buy-in, they’ve already designed the change in a vacuum. Often with the best of intentions — speed, clarity, strategic alignment. But even well-planned changes fall flat if they’re perceived as top-down mandates.

So what follows? Elaborate communication campaigns, town hall meetings, leadership roadshows, briefing cascades from middle management; all supported by slick presentations with compelling narratives and charismatic delivery. And yet, people still hesitate.

When employees are treated as spectators to change, they naturally respond with scepticism, resistance, or passive compliance. Their psychological positioning is defensive rather than creative.

Ownership Builds Accountability

The alternative is slower upfront, but far more effective over time: design the change with the people who need to deliver it. Ask better questions earlier. Give teams the space to shape how the change lands in their context. And hold them accountable for the results because they helped build the solution.

The most successful transformations involve leaders who conduct regular floor walks to observe implementation challenges firsthand, who publicly acknowledge their own learning curves with new systems, and who visibly adjust their decision-making processes to align with the new direction. 

When leaders position themselves as fellow travellers on the transformation journey, something remarkable happens: employees respond in kind and ownership cascades. The question shifts from “Why are they making us change?” to “How can I contribute to our evolution?”

Instead of seeking buy-in, change leaders need to learn to:

  • Engage people in defining the problem before prescribing the solution
  • Involve key stakeholders in designing the change, not just implementing it
  • Acknowledge their own uncertainties and learning curves rather than projecting perfect certainty
  • Focus on contribution, not only compliance.

So if your change programme is relying on buy-in to succeed, it’s worth stepping back. Not to scrap the plan, but to ask whether the right people were involved in creating it.

If they weren’t, don’t expect alignment, even if the messaging is clear.

Rewriting the Narrative

At Changentum, we don’t “manage” resistance. We partner with leaders to replace outdated change management with human-centred change leadership. Our approach replaces top-down mandates with dialogue, equips teams to lead from every seat, and turns sceptics into advocates.

No blame. No jargon. Just results.

The Leadership Accountability Gap: Why Most Executives Are Failing at Change

The Leadership Accountability Gap: Why Most Executives Are Failing at Change

25-04-15 | Change Leadership

It’s easy to talk about change. Most senior leaders do; at conferences, in town halls, on LinkedIn. They say the right things: “We’re transforming,” “This is a strategic priority,” “We’re committed.” But when it comes to leading real, hard, disruptive change, many executives are quietly stepping back. Not visibly. Not all at once. But enough to make the difference between change that sticks and change that stalls.

This is the leadership accountability gap. It’s not just overlooked; it’s untouched. People see it. They talk about it in hushed tones. But rarely with the leader in question. Instead, it’s tolerated, rationalised, worked around.

Teams bend over backwards to compensate, cover the gaps, and keep things moving, while the very person meant to lead the change becomes the biggest risk to it. Lack of change leadership is the elephant in the boardroom, and pretending it’s not there is costing organisations far more than they realise.

The gap shows up in subtle but familiar ways. A new initiative is launched with bold fanfare, but two months in, the sponsor has “moved on to other priorities.” A leader champions a new way of working, but reverts to old behaviours when under pressure. A board mandates change, but doesn’t fund it. It’s not always about ill intent. Often, it’s about discomfort. Leading change is hard. It’s unpredictable, political, and personal. And for many leaders, it’s safer to delegate and disappear than to stay visible and vulnerable.

But no matter how brilliant your change strategy is, no matter how slick the communications or how committed the project team, if the people at the top aren’t actively owning the change—emotionally, politically, behaviourally—it will fail. Not might. Will.

Why does this happen? The reasons vary, but some patterns are clear:

  • Fear of exposure: Change requires leaders to model new behaviours. If they don’t feel confident in the change themselves, they hesitate or fake it to the point of burnout.
  • Loss of control or status: When change threatens the very structures that elevated a leader, they may resist it; consciously or unconsciously, even while publicly supporting it.
  • Systemic Distraction: Many leaders are overwhelmed by competing “top priorities” which are either self-imposed or mandated from their higher-ups. When everything is a priority, accountability becomes an impossible game of catch up.

Closing this gap isn’t about more training or better comms. It’s about confronting the system that allows leaders to opt out of owning change, while holding others to account for delivering it. It’s about making leadership accountability visible, explicit, and non-transferable.

So what could that look like?

It means change leadership isn’t delegated to a programme manager; it sits with the executive team, day in and day out. It means building governance that exposes not just delivery risks, but leadership risks. It means asking, regularly and publicly: Where is the leadership showing up, and where is it not?

And it means one more hard truth: if you’re a senior leader and your team is struggling to make change happen, the first place to look is the mirror. Not because you’re to blame, but because you’re the one with the leverage to make or break it.

Real transformation starts with real ownership. But unless executives are willing to stand in the discomfort of change—not just sponsor it, but live it—the accountability gap will keep swallowing initiatives and creating discord.

If any of this sounds uncomfortably familiar, this may be a sign that you are ready to lead change differently. Are you?

Rewriting the Narrative

At Changentum, we don’t “manage” resistance. We partner with leaders to replace outdated change management with human-centred change leadership. Our approach replaces top-down mandates with dialogue, equips teams to lead from every seat, and turns sceptics into advocates.

No blame. No jargon. Just results.

Lead Like a Scientist: How to Bring Experimentation into Change Leadership

Lead Like a Scientist: How to Bring Experimentation into Change Leadership

25-04-08 | Actionable Insights, Change Leadership, Process & Methodology

Most organizations still treat change like a rollout. As if it’s a product launch that follows a tightly sequenced Gantt chart, checked off by PMO teams in bi-weekly syncs. But here’s the hard truth: change doesn’t behave like that any more—if it ever did.

We’re in an environment where AI disrupts workflows overnight, where employee expectations shift in real time, and where what worked six months ago is now outdated. Yet somehow, organizations cling to 20th-century models of managing change like a “programme” with linear stages and milestone charts. It’s not working, and you know it.

If you’re leading a transformation right now, you probably feel like you’re spinning multiple plates: adoption is lagging, engagement is patchy, and your team’s patience is wearing thin. And here’s the part no one wants to admit—neither you nor your team really knows if what you’re doing is actually working.

That’s not a failure of leadership. It’s a failure of the outdated change playbook.

Change is a Series of Experiments, Not a Blueprint

Stop treating change like an engineering project. It’s not about executing a perfect plan—it’s about running controlled experiments. Scientists don’t expect success on the first try. They form hypotheses, test them, observe what happens, and adjust quickly. Failed experiments aren’t setbacks, they’re data points.

That’s the mindset today’s leaders need: less rigidity, more real-time learning. Rather than relying on static plans, structure your change initiatives to test, learn, and adapt in rapid cycles. With today’s AI and analytics tools, you can access real-time signals—employee sentiment, productivity trends, adoption behaviours—far faster than traditional pulse surveys or lagging reports.

Tools like Salesforce’s Agentforce are now automating repetitive tasks, generating contextual responses, and surfacing insights directly within daily workflows. Atlassian’s Rovo integrates across Jira, Confluence, and Trello to improve productivity and knowledge-sharing—especially useful in cross-functional projects. And while Microsoft’s Copilot initially faced criticism for being intrusive, it has since matured. With features like Copilot Memory and seamless integration across Microsoft 365, it now provides targeted, context-aware support without disrupting user workflows.

These tools aren’t just tech upgrades, they’re the infrastructure for a faster, more experimental approach to change. Leaders who learn how to use them well are enabled to iterate, respond, and move on. There is no need to wait for perfect alignment.

The Science of Change Leadership

This experimental approach fundamentally shifts your role. You’re no longer the architect drafting perfect plans; you’re the lead scientist designing revealing experiments. Your value comes not from having all the answers, but from asking better questions and designing tests that yield actionable insights.

The implications are profound:

  • Speed outweighs perfection. Quick, imperfect experiments yield more valuable learning than delayed, perfect plans.
  • Failure becomes valuable. Failed experiments aren’t setbacks; they’re data points illuminating the path forward.
  • Transparency becomes essential. Share the experimental nature of your approach with stakeholders. Most will appreciate the authenticity and opportunity for input.

 

It’s Not Rocket Science

The good news is that you don’t need a full-scale overhaul to start leading differently. Just launch one small experiment this week. Try a new way of communicating. Shift a team ritual. Pilot a new incentive. Track what happens—then adjust. You’ll learn more in two weeks than any 30-page change strategy deck could tell you.

You already know the old methods aren’t cutting it. And now, with AI tools that give you live feedback and behavioural signals, you have what you need to lead change in real time—not from a static plan.

If this resonates—and you’re ready to lead with sharper tools and a more adaptive mindset—subscribe to our newsletter for deeper insights, smarter frameworks, and real-world guidance that empowers you to join the 30% club of successful change leaders.

Rewriting the Narrative

At Changentum, we don’t “manage” resistance. We partner with leaders to replace outdated change management with human-centred change leadership. Our approach replaces top-down mandates with dialogue, equips teams to lead from every seat, and turns sceptics into advocates.

No blame. No jargon. Just results.

Change Leadership vs. Project Management: How Not To Fail

Change Leadership vs. Project Management: How Not To Fail

25-04-01 | Actionable Insights, Change Leadership

The corporate world is littered with the skeletons of failed change initiatives. After 20+ years in this field, I’ve watched organizations pour millions into meticulously planned transformations only to wonder why employees never truly embraced them and scratch their heads about how to maintain positive momentum. The answer lies in a fundamental misconception: treating change as a project to be managed rather than a journey to be led.

The False Dichotomy We Need to Abandon

To be brutally honest, traditional models have created an artificial divide between change management and project management that serves neither purpose effectively. Project managers focus on delivering outputs (on time, on budget), while change managers are expected to somehow magically ensure adoption.

This siloed approach is one of the many reasons behind the enduring 70% failure rate of transformation efforts.

The Project Initiation Problem No One Talks About

Here’s the uncomfortable truth most leaders don’t like to acknowledge: many initiatives are doomed before they even begin. Organizations routinely greenlight projects without conducting proper due diligence on change readiness, resource availability, or organizational capability.

The result? A portfolio bloated with:

  • Vanity projects that should have never left the drawing board
  • “Must-have” initiatives shoehorned onto teams already at capacity
  • Competing priorities that fragment organizational focus and energy

When organizations indiscriminately launch initiatives without strategic alignment, is it any wonder so many fail? True change leadership begins long before project kickoff—it starts with the courage to say “no” to the wrong initiatives and “not yet” to the right ones at the wrong time.

Change Leadership Beyond Project Execution

Change leadership transcends both the mechanical aspects of project delivery and the soft skills of traditional change management. It requires the strategic vision to:

  • Ruthlessly prioritize initiatives based on genuine organizational need
  • Assess organizational capacity before committing resources
  • Create breathing room for teams to absorb and integrate changes
  • Build coalitions of support before implementation begins

While project managers focus on deliverables, timelines and budgets, change leaders focus on readiness, capacity, and sustainable transformation.

Reframing Our Approach to Transformation

The organizations consistently succeeding at change have abandoned not just the notion that you can simply “manage” people through change, but also the belief that more initiatives equals more progress. Instead, they embrace a model where:

Change leadership establishes the preconditions for success—rigorously evaluating initiatives, aligning stakeholders, and creating the necessary environment for change to flourish.

Project management then executes within this fertile context, where resources are available, priorities are clear, and organizational fatigue has been accounted for.

A New Path Forward

The most progressive organizations are creating transformation offices that evaluate all potential initiatives through the lens of organizational capacity and change saturation. They understand that attempting five initiatives with full commitment yields better results than pursuing fifteen with fragmented attention.

This approach requires uncomfortable conversations about what not to do, a decision many leaders tend to avoid. But this decision-making capacity is what separates true change leaders from mere project sponsors.

The Cost of Maintaining the Status Quo

Is your organization suffering from initiative overload? Are you launching projects without assessing whether your people have the bandwidth to absorb them? Is your transformation portfolio filled with pet projects that lack strategic alignment?

The financial implications of this approach are staggering and rarely considered. Here are three perspectives that drive the message home:

  • According to the Project Management Institute, “Organizations waste $97 million for every $1 billion invested in projects due to poor project performance.” Source: PMI
  • Companies with high employee ratings on change effectiveness achieve 264% more revenue growth compared to companies with below-average change effectiveness. Source: WTW
  • According to Leadership IQ, 31% of CEOs get fired for poor change management. Source: Leadership IQ 

Rewriting the Narrative

At Changentum, we don’t “manage” resistance. We partner with leaders to replace outdated change management with human-centered change leadership. Our approach replaces top-down mandates with dialogue, equips teams to lead from every seat, and turns sceptics into advocates.

No blame. No jargon. Just results.

The Myth of the “Difficult Employee”: What Leaders are Missing

The Myth of the “Difficult Employee”: What Leaders are Missing

25-03-25 | Actionable Insights, Change Leadership

Let’s start with a provocation: there’s no such thing as a “difficult employee” when it comes to change, only disengaged leadership and misplaced accountability.

For decades, the narrative of “employee resistance” has been shaped by outdated change management models that treat people as passive recipients of top-down decisions. When employees push back, stall, or question the process, leaders default to labels like “resistant” or “difficult.” But this framing reveals far more about leadership than it does about employees.

What if resistance is just feedback that we don’t want to hear?

The traditional playbook—ADKAR, Kotter, Lewin—positions resistance as a problem to “manage” and employees as obstacles to compliance. But this mindset is a smokescreen. By blaming people, leaders absolve themselves of accountability for systemic failures: unclear purpose, a lack of psychological safety, or a history of broken promises. Employees don’t resist change; they resist being excluded. They resist confusion, contradictions, and initiatives where they’re expected to comply without context, adjust without support, and deliver without being genuinely brought in.
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The Real Failure of “Change Management”

Traditional frameworks prioritize plans, comms strategies, and training timelines. But if change could truly be “managed,” we wouldn’t see 70% of initiatives fail. The uncomfortable truth is that change fails because ownership is often confined to the project team, accountability is vague, and leaders wash their hands of responsibility instead of showing up as change leaders.

So what’s the alternative? A move from change management to change leadership, ownership, and accountability by embracing these three radical shifts:

  1. Change Leadership Beats Change Management
    Leadership isn’t about delegating tasks—it’s about embodying the change. Employees watch leaders for cues: Do they navigate ambiguity openly? Listen more than they direct? Stay visibly committed when challenges arise? Leaders who model curiosity, humility, and consistency don’t just announce change, they ignite it.
  2. Change Ownership Beats Compliance
    Ownership isn’t created through a town hall announcement, management coercion or training modules. It happens when employees are invited to co-create the change that impacts their work. When people are invited into the design, decision-making, and iteration of the change itself, that’s when the magic happens.
  3. Change Accountability Beats Control
    Accountability is not a one-way street. There are always high expectations that employees must deliver, but at the same time, leaders must answer for the opportunities and conditions they create. This means reviewing and actively managing cultural signals (e.g., trust, psychological safety) and leadership behaviours (e.g., transparency, follow-through), not just milestones. Did leaders clarify the why? Did they address past failures? Did they listen to critical voices? Because scepticism often stems from bad experiences in the past, not stubbornness.

The “Difficult Employee” is Your Greatest Ally

When we make this shift, the so-called “difficult employee” transforms into the truth-teller, the one brave enough to surface what others are afraid to express out loud. Their pushback isn’t sabotage; it’s an early warning signal that leaders haven’t done enough to foster trust, clarity, or inclusion.

So before labelling resistance, leaders need to ask:

  • How well have we led this so far?
  • Where have we created space for ownership?
  • How are we making ourselves accountable for how this change is landing?

The “difficult employee” myth persists because it’s easier to blame than to reflect. But real leadership means welcoming resistance as a mirror, and having the courage to look into it.

Because change isn’t something we do to people. It’s something we do with them, or not at all.

Change-Speak Madness: The False Promise of “Accountability Culture”

Change-Speak Madness: The False Promise of “Accountability Culture”

25-03-21 | Change Confessions, Change Leadership, Change-Speak

“We’re building a culture of accountability”. The moment those words escape a leader’s lips, my internal alarm bells start ringing. It’s one of the many corporate phrases that promise so much whilst often delivering so little. Because, in practice, it’s the executive team’s way of saying “we want everyone else to be held responsible for outcomes” whilst quietly exempting themselves from the same standards. True accountability isn’t something you announce, it’s something you demonstrate.

And here’s where the hypocrisy often reveals itself:

Leaders trumpet “accountability” then promptly avoid difficult conversations with underperforming senior team members. They demand extreme consistency for frontline metrics whilst their own erratic decision-making is positioned as a “strategic pivot.” They insist on rigid deadlines for their workforce whilst taking their own sweet time to respond to simple approval requests.

This twisted version of accountability is typically directed downwards, never upward. And in this guise, accountability becomes a weapon used to control rather than a way of working meant to encourage greatness.

Genuine accountability cultures don’t need to be announced because they’re visible in action. They’re evident when leaders publicly admit their mistakes. They shine through when executives face the same consequences for missed targets as their teams. They’re unmistakable when feedback flows freely in all directions without career-limiting repercussions.

  • If your organisation is serious about accountability, be sure to incorporate these essential strategies:
  • Create psychological safety where failure is seen as a learning opportunity, not career suicide.
  • Ensure those accountable are given genuine decision-making authority.
    Distribute accountability proportionally to power and influence.
  • Recognise systemic constraints instead of blaming individual shortcomings.

Next time you hear “we’re building a culture of accountability,” ask yourself: are we creating conditions for success, or just identifying who to punish for failure?

The difference isn’t subtle. It’s everything.

Welcome to the Friday Confessional. If you know, you know.