The Leadership Skills That Make Transformation Stick

Summary

HBR IdeaCast: "The Leadership Skills That Make Transformation Stick"

Episode Date: May 12, 2026
Host: Adi Ignatius and Alison Beard
Guest: Julia Dhar (Managing Director & Partner, BCG; Co-founder, BCG’s Behavioral Science Lab)
Theme: Science-backed leadership practices that make organizational transformation durable and more likely to succeed.

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into why so many organizational transformation initiatives fail, exploring not just the strategic or operational missteps but, critically, the overlooked human and behavioral factors. Guest Julia Dhar brings research evidence and practical frameworks from her book, How Change Really Happens: Seven Science-Based Principles for Transforming Your Organization, detailing how leaders can use behavioral science to foster true alignment, recognize emotions, rally participation, and sustain momentum for lasting change.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Grim Reality: Why Do Transformations Fail?

• Statistical Truth: Over 70% of transformation efforts fall short of intended goals or outright fail. ([01:47])
• Defining Failure:
  • Not returning value to shareholders within a specified period.
  • Failure to achieve the objectives set at the outset by initiators.
  • Result: Enormous waste of human potential, talent, and optimism. ([03:10]-[03:44])

"That rate has consistently hovered somewhere between 60 and 75% for the last several decades, that's an enormous waste of human potential and talent and frankly optimism."
— Co-author, [03:44]

• The Core Problem:
  • It's not just bad plans or bad execution.
  • Leaders often ignore "the how" of change, relegating it to lower organizational levels.
  • Most transformations require a behavior shift—and leaders under-invest in understanding whether people will actually change behaviors, have incentives, skills, or motivation to do so. ([04:10]-[05:26])

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Executive vs. Employee Mindset: Bridging the Enthusiasm Gap

• Research Finding:
  • 70% of executives are positive about change (even when details unknown).
  • 45% of non-executives feel positive—so, “people just don't like to change” is a myth, but there's a material enthusiasm gap. ([07:18])

"There is a huge gap between the predisposition of executives for change and for employees in organizations... the goal shouldn’t be to get everyone as excited or optimistic as executives, that’s probably a fool’s errand."
— Julia Dhar, [07:18]

• Takeaway for Leaders: Focus should be on practical, behaviorally-focused interventions to bridge the gap—not just hyping people up.

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The Emotion Factor: Managing and Measuring Team Emotions

• Quote: "The emotions that employees feel during a transformation may not be your fault, but they are your problem." ([08:44])
• Behavioral Science Principles:
  • Provide clear expectations.
  • Remove obvious barriers.
  • Align change with existing incentives. ([10:12]-[10:23])
• Practical Advice: Organizations are often empathetic toward customers but forget to extend the same curiosity and support toward their own employees navigating change. ([10:32])

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Diagnosing and Managing Emotional States During Change

• Top Two Employee Emotions:
  1. Curiosity – "I want to learn more."
  2. Anxiety – "Am I threatened, or how am I affected?"
  • This mix ("curious anxiety") must be addressed, not ignored. ([11:46]-[12:08])
• Leaders Should Regularly Ask:
  • Would you recommend this transformation to a colleague?
  • Do you think we are likely to be successful with the goals we’ve set out? ([13:07]-[13:42])
• Purpose: To get honest feedback and to see if the "what" has connected successfully to the "how".

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Behavioral Science Principles for Sustainable Change

• Increase Odds via Engagement: Engagement and understanding increase the probability of success, though not a guarantee. ([14:14])
• Three Key Principles Julia Highlights:
  1. Stories and Symbols: Leverage narratives and visible symbols for behavior change.
  2. Momentum: Treat it as a scarce, renewable resource that must be maintained.
  3. Identify Barriers: Directly address obstacles to new behaviors. ([15:04]-[15:24])

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Not All Resistance = Hate for Change

• Reality: Only a minority are chronically resistant. Most are wary for practical reasons—address those. ([15:30]-[15:56])

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The IKEA Effect & Employee Ownership

• Concept: When people help create something, they value and protect it disproportionately (“IKEA effect”). ([16:01]-[17:03])
• Application:
  • Involve employees in naming projects or sequencing actions.
  • Consensus isn’t always possible, but authentic participation increases buy-in.
  • “People don’t sabotage projects they helped to create.” ([17:03])

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Stories as Change Catalysts

• Power of Narrative: "Perhaps the most underused tool for behavioral change is the well-told story and the powerful visible symbol." ([20:21]-[20:33])
• Three Types of Change Narratives:
  1. Threat: Change or die (e.g., Ford after the financial crisis).
  2. Fitness: Get better at what you already do; address sloppiness.
  3. Destiny: Realize the company’s deeper promise (e.g., John Deere’s transformation into a software company). ([21:20]-[22:43])
• Honesty First: A story must be true and specific about reality and requests.

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Momentum: Planning and Sustaining Progress

• Deliberateness is Key: Momentum is one of the few genuinely controllable variables.
• Leaders Should:
  • Look for early wins and recognize them.
  • Set regular rituals and check-ins to sustain energy and progress.
  • Celebrate humble progress to reinforce belief in change. ([23:18]-[24:39], [27:08]-[27:38])

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Early Signs of Stalling & How to Respond

• Red Flags:
  • Executives skipping meetings for non-emergencies.
  • Speaking in vague terms: "the organization is tired" (there’s no organizational fatigue, only real individuals). ([25:34]-[26:50])
  • Neglecting praise, early wins, or celebration.
• Leader Actions:
  • Make explicit, shared commitments.
  • Routinely measure and discuss behaviors and emotions.
  • Redistribute resources where fatigue or energy dips appear. ([27:08]-[27:55])

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Two Crucial Leadership Skills to Make Transformation Stick

1. Test for True Agreement:
   • Use a low-tech check: have the senior team independently write down the "what" and "how" of the change. If stories differ, alignment is false. ([28:17])
2. Design a Real “Take Up” Plan:
   • Clarify which roles must change which behaviors.
   • Identify if it’s likely they’ll do so; if not, create conditions that make it more probable.
   • “If you build it, they still probably won’t come – unless you have a plan for take up.” ([29:12])

"You can do this whole audit on two pieces of paper. Number one, do we have true agreement? ... Number two, a good plan for behavioral shifts."
— Julia Dhar, [30:02]-[30:17]

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Real-World Example: Delta Airlines’ "Velvet" Program

• Practice: Senior executives spend time and listen to frontline employees (mechanics, baggage handlers, cabin crew, etc.).
• Result: Built a culture where leaders change first, employees are recognized, and incentives are aligned.
• Core Belief: Take care of employees → They take care of customers → Customers take care of shareholders. ([30:43]-[32:18])

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Memorable Quotes

• "It clearly isn’t most people. And so where we run into resistance... a pretty reasonable assumption is not that those people generically hate to change. It might be that they're just not currently buying what you're selling." ([15:30]-[15:56])
• "People do not burn down houses that they have had a hand in building. People don't sabotage projects that they helped to create." ([17:02]-[17:03])
• "Momentum... might be one of the only really truly controllable variables." ([23:18])
• "If you build it, they still probably won't come." ([29:12])

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Useful Timestamps

• Opening statistics and framing: [01:37]-[03:59]
• Diagnosis of why transformations fail: [03:10]-[05:26]
• Employee vs. executive mindset: [07:02]-[08:44]
• Emotions in transformation, curiosity/anxiety: [11:45]-[12:08]
• Behavioral science and the IKEA effect: [16:01]-[17:32]
• Tactics for alignment and “take up” planning: [28:17]-[30:19]
• Delta Airlines example: [30:43]-[32:18]

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Takeaways for Leaders

• Don’t Chase Enthusiasm – Bridge the Gap: Focus on realistic, behaviorally-oriented engagement, not just hype.
• Measure and Manage Emotions: Regularly check both curiosity and anxiety.
• Use Narrative and Storytelling Power: Frame change honestly as threat, fitness, or destiny.
• Plan for “Take Up,” Not Just Rollout: Map expected behavior changes and test likelihood early.
• Sustain (and Celebrate) Momentum: Ritualize reviews, recognize small wins, and design structural supports for progress.
• Build Ownership Through Involvement: The more people shape a change, the more they own and protect it.

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This episode brings fresh, evidence-based humility to leading transformation, emphasizing rigor around behavior, practical empathy, honest storytelling, shared rituals, and the discipline to measure and manage emotional undercurrents throughout.

Transcript

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[Adi Ignatius]

I'm adi ignatius.

[Alison Beard]

Hi, I'm alison beard and this is the hbr ideacast.

[Adi Ignatius]

All right, Allison, it is quiz time. What percent of attempted transformations AT organizations fail?

[Alison Beard]

I know, it's a lot. I'll say half.

[Adi Ignatius]

That is a good guess. It's actually worse. 70% or more than 2/3 fail or at least fall short of their intended goals.

[Alison Beard]

Wow, that is a depressing statistic. And I guess the follow up question I would have is why? Why did they fail?

[Adi Ignatius]

Well, that is the good journalistic question. Look, it's of course about poor execution, but a lot of it can be understood through the lens of behavioral science as opposed to pure strategic discipline. So it's understanding what it means to have true alignment, to have agency, and to understand the emotional issues that are involved in a big transformation.

[Alison Beard]

That makes a lot of sense to me. It sounds like you're saying that people skills are really the most critical ones for leaders to have.

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[Adi Ignatius]

Leading to transformation involves humans who are grappling with how to make decisions, how to be persuasive, how to test their biases, and so on. So yeah, very human things that can make or break a successful transformation. So speaking on that today is Julia Dahr, who is managing director and partner at Boston Consulting Group and founder of BCG's Behavioral Science Lab. She's the co author, along with Christy Elmer and Philip Jamison, of the book How Change really seven Science Based Principles for Transforming youg Organization. And here's our Conversation, you know, you assert, and this isn't controversial, I think this is well known. But I want to talk about this. The idea that most change efforts fail. So what do you mean by that and what does failure mean in this context?

[Julia Dhar]

We actually mean one of two things.

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

Either they failed to return value to shareholders over the specified period and or they didn't achieve the objectives that the people who set up the change initiative or the program set out at the beginning of the effort.

[Julia Dhar]

And that in and of itself is pretty bad.

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

An even more unfortunate under discussed element of that is it is expensive to try and change an organization to shift how groups of people get something done together.

[Julia Dhar]

And so when we look at that

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

failure rate, and that rate has consistently hovered somewhere between 60 and 75% for the last several decades, that's an enormous waste of human potential and talent and frankly optimism.

[Adi Ignatius]

And is your sense that, you know, the plans are good but the failure is in the execution, or that somehow the plants that we're drawing up are not even getting us in the right direction?

[Julia Dhar]

It's a little of both.

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

That we don't bring far enough upstream the how of change.

[Julia Dhar]

And I have a little bit of sympathy with that.

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

I think that there is an assumption in some camps that that is boring or unglamorous. I could imagine that some people might even say that is work that should happen lower down in the organization that isn't really the work of executives. My co authors and I completely disagree with that. That successful strategy is very much grounded in the how. So that's part of it. We don't talk about the how early enough. The second is we don't talk enough about the idea that it is not just a shift in concept or product or pricing, but generally we are talking about a behavior shift. And we don't ask deeply enough, often enough, is it likely that the people who we need to change their behavior are going to do this? Will they do it because they have the right incentives? Can they do it because they have the right skills? Will they be excited to do it because they have the right motivation?

[Julia Dhar]

That's all in a sort of bundle

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

of topics and concepts that in behavioural science we talk about as take up. We don't spend enough time saying is the change we desire other people to make probable?

[Adi Ignatius]

So let's talk about some of the challenges. So we've all been through transformations where let's say leadership says we're going to do this dramatically new thing. And often employees, if I can generalize, are like, ah, come on oh, please. You know, they're used to doing things one way and somebody says, we're going to do things other way. So you have this gap. Talk about that gap and why it matters and how leaders can try to narrow it and get past that.

[Julia Dhar]

I love the way you started, which is to say we all, if we have pretty much any amount of work experience, we've all seen a movie of this before. One of our primary motives as we

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

went into this work was to attack some of those cliches associated with change in organizations. A classic one when things start to

[Julia Dhar]

ebb or get a little bit low on steam or enthusiasm. If someone usually senior in the organization says, well, after all, people just don't like to change. And so the first question we were asking was, is that true? And the way that we set out to answer that question was to take 6,000 people in a dozen countries around the world, 1,000 executives and 5,000 non executives, and give them a version of a really simple change in their daily life and said, or in this case,

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

in their professional life.

[Julia Dhar]

A change is coming to your professional life. You don't yet know what it means for you. It's the impact on the organization, the

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

magnitude of the change.

[Julia Dhar]

Instinctively, how do you feel about the

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

change from very positive to very negative?

[Julia Dhar]

70% of executives feel very positive or positive. And this is where you know nothing about the change the change could have been. We have decided we can do without you on the executive team, for example. But like, there's a kind of hardwired enthusiasm among those senior leaders for change. But about 45% of employees also feel positive or very positive. So thing number one, it's clearly not true that people just hate to change. We also generally are somewhat favorable towards change, but nowhere near as favorable as executives. There is a huge gap between the predisposition of executives for change and for employees in organizations. And so that means that when you run into that other fairly common cliche in big change programs, that we just need to get everybody excited, the goal shouldn't be to get everyone as excited or optimistic as executives, that's probably a fool's errand. It should be to try and bridge that distance through very specific, ideally behaviourally focused interventions that bring people closer to an understanding of what needs to change.

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

Why?

[Julia Dhar]

And very practically, what are we going to do not only to make that change achievable, but ideally also pretty attractive.

[Adi Ignatius]

You have a great line in the book that says the emotions that employees feel during a transformation may not be your fault, but they are Your problem because they affect your chances of success. And that, to me, is interesting. There is an emotional component to change. I think for employees, change feels like something that will happen to them. Maybe it's executives that feel like this is something that will benefit them. But it's interesting because it's, you know, you can either say, look, get with the program or you're out, or you can get engaged in a more sophisticated way on these emotional levels in narrowing these gaps.

[Julia Dhar]

You know that line that you just

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

quoted, that the emotions of executives during change may not be your fault, but

[Julia Dhar]

they are your problem, was written by

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

one of my co authors, Phil Jamison, who had also pitched an alternative title

[Julia Dhar]

for the book that was not ultimately

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

successful for reasons that are about to be very obvious, but was kind of charming. The alternative that he had pitched was

[Julia Dhar]

Shut up and Change. And there's so much about the way in which we often do change in organizations that has an element of shut up and change to it. Or we might more gently say, people just have to get on the bus or we will leave them behind, as opposed to saying, we have a sincere interest in reasons why adopting a new behavior is challenging. And we sort of know these really basic laws of behavioral science, like the number one way in which we can help someone adopt a new behavior in a context is to provide a very

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

specific set of expectations.

[Julia Dhar]

The second is to remove obvious barriers. And the third is to make sure

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

that it's consistent with any other sets of incentives that they have inside the organization or other pressures that they have in their lives.

[Julia Dhar]

When we say those sorts of things in a meeting room, I think people instinctively nod and agree when we describe those challenges in relation to a customer, for example, Often executives are extremely curious, very passionate about knowing in detail what the challenges or concerns of moving, for instance, a customer through a digital sales funnel might be. But we lose a little bit of that same empathy, curiosity, helpfulness, even, maybe,

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

or sympathy for the objections that people

[Julia Dhar]

have when it comes to people that we know much better, hopefully have at least as much care for which is our own employees in the organization.

[Adi Ignatius]

So I think what you're saying is that the emotional resistance or the questions that employees have is understandable, needs to be managed. How do you even gauge and measure the emotional response to the process that's underway if your goal is to eventually get as much alignment as you possibly can, but by the way, to maybe get feedback from down below that will help tweak the strategic process in ways that leadership might not have seen initially?

[Julia Dhar]

One of the things that we ask

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

people, in addition to what's your instinctive reaction to this change, is what are

[Julia Dhar]

the emotions that you instinctively feel? As we describe this, the number one emotion is curiosity, which is really encouraging.

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

It's people saying, I want to learn more.

[Julia Dhar]

That's really consistent with basically everything else

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

ever written on change that says one of our failures is a failure to

[Julia Dhar]

communicate and to successfully explain to people what we are doing. But the number two emotion is anxiety. And so that means that we have a group of people, often thousands of people, existing in the organization in a state of curious anxiety that does need to be managed or at least really well understood. I mean, let me talk a little

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

bit about day to day, what I do in some of my own work.

[Julia Dhar]

One is literally ask people all of the time, very often through a survey.

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

For example, at the start or end of a shift, if you are in

[Julia Dhar]

a factory or a store, the start

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

or end of the day, if you do a job that is desk based,

[Julia Dhar]

what are the emotions that you are feeling? And that actually is not the easiest thing in the world for people to do. But if you give people a moment

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

to reflect on it, people are able and generally very willing to share that.

[Julia Dhar]

The two other questions that I really encourage, frankly, everyone leading a change in

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

organizations to ask of the people they are requesting make a change is, number

[Julia Dhar]

one, would you recommend this transformation to a colleague? The other one that I find very,

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

very useful in figuring out whether the what has connected successfully to the how

[Julia Dhar]

is asking people, do you think we

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

are likely to be successful with the goals that we have set out? And so note that's not do you

[Julia Dhar]

agree with the goals? Do you think they will be good for you personally? Do you generally think that we are

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

likely to be successful in achieving them?

[Julia Dhar]

And so that allows people to move into a more objective stance, but also to consider whether or not, based on what they've been told about what we are trying to do here, whether or

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

not it's probable that that will unfold.

[Adi Ignatius]

If you get this right in terms of this employee engagement, this kind of emotional understanding, narrowing the gap through sort of intelligent ways, then what I mean, are you saying that that is the key to a successful transformation, that increases the odds? I mean, what's the value precisely of getting that right?

[Julia Dhar]

It doesn't guarantee that you move from being unsuccessful to successful, but incrementally it increases your probability of being successful because

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

you have a much better understanding of

[Julia Dhar]

how in fact, that change is actually

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

taking place in the organization.

[Julia Dhar]

Of course, there are many mountains beyond

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

having climbed the first mountain of empathy and understanding. And those are really specifically what does behavioral science recommend in terms of successfully and sustainably reaching people who need to change and who perhaps need to change on a very sustained and consistent basis? They need to make some pretty significant effort to move from the status quo.

[Julia Dhar]

We talk about seven of them in

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

the book, but a couple that I

[Julia Dhar]

really like are making much stronger use of stories and symbols, thinking about and

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

considering momentum as a resource that the organization has and can steward to appropriately manage the discretionary effort of individuals, and

[Julia Dhar]

getting really sharp about what the barriers

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

are to people doing something differently in an organization.

[Julia Dhar]

And indeed, there is a small number of people who appear to be allergic to change, persistently very negative about change, but it clearly isn't most people. And so where we run into resistance

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

in an effort to make some kind of change in the organization, a pretty

[Julia Dhar]

reasonable assumption is not that those people

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

generically hate to change.

[Julia Dhar]

It might be that they're just not

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

currently buying what you're selling.

[Adi Ignatius]

Julia so talk about the IKEA effect in employee engagement. Talk about what that is.

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

Have you ever assembled flat pack furniture, IKEA or otherwise?

[Adi Ignatius]

Oh my God, so many times, including

[Julia Dhar]

maybe with someone you loved or cared about?

[Adi Ignatius]

Yeah, initially we probably weren't talking by the end of it, but.

[Julia Dhar]

Yeah, exactly. But the IKEA effect, brilliantly described and

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

documented by Mike Norton at Harvard Business

[Julia Dhar]

School, basically says that people who have

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

had a hand in creating something disproportionately value it. That's the important takeaway for executives. The way experimentally he demonstrated this was

[Julia Dhar]

by having people build IKEA boxes. Maybe you have one of these in your house and then asking what they

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

would be willing to pay for it

[Julia Dhar]

versus one assembled by a professional. And you can probably guess the ending to this story that people were willing to pay 63% more for their own, I'm going to assume, inferior boxes than they were for a professionally assembled one. People do not burn down houses that

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

they have had a hand in building.

[Julia Dhar]

People don't sabotage projects that they helped to create. And a consequence of that is to say we don't always have to make it unbelievably easy for people to participate in change. But giving people a reasonable opportunity, a sincere and genuine opportunity, to shape an

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

element of the project that affects them,

[Julia Dhar]

is an important and really useful step

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

to be able to take.

[Julia Dhar]

I often think things that executives can immediately do is upfront as we are designing a project, ask people how comprehensive

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

the understanding of the problem is and give them an opportunity to have input

[Julia Dhar]

at that point, allow people to do things like name a project or to determine the right sequence of events for

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

certain changes to be ruled out.

[Julia Dhar]

Of course, not everything in an organization

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

can be by consensus.

[Julia Dhar]

It cannot be a democracy. But if we keep the IKEA effect in mind that people who have shaped something take care of it, it quickly becomes their agenda, as opposed to the CEO's agenda. You start to see intuitively, although this has also been proven analytically, that the

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

chance of success is much higher.

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[Adi Ignatius]

So we've been talking mostly about the extent to which there's alignment between know, leadership and employees. But there's also, you know, and we've seen this where even among leaders, executives aren't fully aligned. And this I think gets into the storytelling aspect to a degree. I mean I've, you know, I've been involved with startup companies and been involved with efforts to tell their stories. And tell their stories is useful for investors, for the public, for the media, but also internally, you know, sometimes it's in the storytelling that you realize that senior people aren't completely aligned. So to what extent is that a problem in transformation efforts and to what extent can that be broken down?

[Julia Dhar]

One of the things I feel we

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

know for sure is that perhaps the most underused tool for behavioral change is the well told story and the powerful visible symbol.

[Julia Dhar]

Human beings, we are profoundly narrative. Which I've guess is good for people like you and me who love words, but it's actually good for people who think that they are only mobilized by

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

numbers or by data.

[Julia Dhar]

Stories are memorable to us. They mobilize us to action.

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

They captivate our attention.

[Julia Dhar]

However, a really important thing is to note that in order for a story to work well as a Tool for

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

behavior change in an organization.

[Julia Dhar]

The very first step is that it must be true and it must be honest and specific about the reality and

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

the request that the storyteller is making of the listener.

[Julia Dhar]

We talk about three different types of

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

story of mobilizing for change in an organization.

[Julia Dhar]

Type number one, threat we have to change or we will suffer and maybe die. Ford did this really successfully after the auto bailouts, after global financial crisis, and in rebuilding and turning around that organization,

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

often a couple more times after that.

[Julia Dhar]

The second type is fitness. And this, by the way, is most of the change efforts in organizations. We need to continue to get incrementally better at what we do best, or we have gotten a little sloppy, a little loose, a little undisciplined at what makes us really good and we need to be more consistent. And then the third type is destiny. Say by making this shift, we can actually realize the promise of what this company was always meant to be. We can become who we really are. John May, when he talked about the

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

transformation of John Deere towards being not

[Julia Dhar]

just a hard iron company that sold tractors and farming equipment, but to one that also sold software that allowed farmers to be much more productive. That was a really good example of a destiny story. Threat fitness or destiny. The thing that leaders have to make a choice about is where are they

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

genuinely in the business cycle, in the

[Julia Dhar]

strategy cycle, in the change cycle, and invite people to participate accordingly.

[Adi Ignatius]

I know you write about momentum in the book. When you're launching a transformation, should you think about momentum? Should you think about, we're going to have this early win, but we have to think about, you know, let's not just see what happens and hope that it works. Let's actually stage a kind of plan for momentum so that there is this constant, you know, let's say positive feedback as we keep moving, as we hit another milestone, should we plan momentum into our transformation strategies?

[Julia Dhar]

100%.

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

It might be one of the only

[Julia Dhar]

really truly controllable variables. And what I mean by that is basically in any organization, there will never be enough money, there will never be

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

enough time, there will never be enough executive attention.

[Julia Dhar]

But we can be really deliberate about momentum, including asking, are we continuing to increase momentum, to gain yardage? For example, are we stuck where we were a week ago? And what will it take to give people a sense of progress? Because one of the things we know for sure is that if individuals or groups of people believe that they are capable of doing something that turns out to be kind of a self fulfilling prophecy and the best way to do that is not just to tell people to be confident, but it's to give them the experience of acquired competence and success over time. And so in that way, momentum can start to move towards perpetual motion. I do think there is one pretty ugly truth about momentum that we don't talk about nearly enough in the planning phase or the deciding phase of change, which is like a lot of efforts

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

to change our own behavior.

[Julia Dhar]

It's not just that it gets messy in the middle, so sometimes it gets boring in the middle. And that sometimes what we could say is a loss of momentum or we diagnose as a problem of motivation or morale somewhere deeper in the organization is actually just that executives have lost interest and have moved on to something else. And actually asking, critically examining now the structure of the program, to say, is there a set of rituals, is there a weekly cadence and drumbeat for the program that will actually give it its own momentum so we don't have to think too hard about whether or not

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

we're all still in this together would

[Julia Dhar]

be very helpful for everyone.

[Adi Ignatius]

What are some early signs that a transformation is starting to stall in that way or in any other way? And what do you do about it?

[Julia Dhar]

I think a couple are those really obvious, but also easy to ignore daily or weekly signs. Things like an executive suddenly not attending a meeting because there was, not because of an emergency, but somewhere else that they had decided to be, for example, you can get around that by saying, we have a very rigorous set of expectations for one another up front, but that's a sign that you might be experiencing not so much loss of momentum in the organisation, but a little bit of boredom from executives. The second is if you are not systematically saying, let's measure and understand the behaviors and emotions of the organization, when you start to revert to expressions, cliches, frankly, like, I think the organization is tired, clearly not like an organization cannot be tired. People in an organization, of course, can be tired, they can be burnt out, they can be overworked. It is highly unlikely that it is everyone in the organization. And it cheapens that experience to just say, well, I think the organization is tired. I think there is general change fatigue,

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

so we should just back off a little bit, as opposed to saying, that's an opportunity to make deliberate choices about where energy and effort and by the way, other resources, including money, including expertise, are going in the organization.

[Julia Dhar]

And then I think the final one is if we underuse celebration, we underuse

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

praise, appreciation, recognition, and I think often

[Julia Dhar]

a painful reality about the early Phases

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

of change that you need some early wins.

[Julia Dhar]

We need this sense of endowed progress to keep going.

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

We often have to talk about those early wins for much longer than we want to.

[Julia Dhar]

They're much more humble than we would

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

hope that they are.

[Julia Dhar]

But knowing that those are visible to people, that they remind everyone in the

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

organization that change is possible and that change is appreciated, is a really important act for executives who can amplify those successes, who can transmit their expectations through them.

[Adi Ignatius]

So, you know, if somebody's listening to this and is feeling, yeah, you know, I'm leading a transformation effort, I really want it to succeed. I believe in this. I understand that it's complicated. What are a couple things to think about that are within their grasp, that are reasonable to grasp onto as a starting point to kind of increase the chances that this transformation is going to succeed.

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

Step number one, before you go too wide that you change maker, ask yourself is would I have false alignment? A bunch of people often in senior roles saying, this sounds good or do I have true agreement? An incredibly easy tactical way to test this is have that core team take out a pen, a piece of paper, this is a very low tech test and write down what it is that we have agreed to do, what is changing and how is it going to work. Until you have that consistently agreed, all of us are able to write down approximately the same thing. Approximately the same what and approximately the same how? You don't really have a change agenda. The second one is to focus on take up. And so you know this line from, often misquoted from Field of Dreams. If you build it, they will come in change programs.

[Julia Dhar]

I think it's a really safe assumption. If you build it, they still probably won't come.

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

Unless you have created a plan for

[Julia Dhar]

take up for people to do the

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

behaviors that you hope that they will do. And a take up plan. If you are sitting there by yourself saying, I have no resources, I have no behavioral science inside my organization is as simple as this. It is asking a project manager or a project owner to write down the answer to the question, which specific individuals and roles in this organization need to change their behavior? What behavior change do we expect and is it likely that people will make that shift based on the plan that we have? If no, you need a better takeout

[Julia Dhar]

plan because your business case assumes that

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

people are going to change and you know that they won't. So you can do this whole audit on two pieces of paper. Number one, do we have true agreement?

[Julia Dhar]

You'll know you do.

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

When everybody is writing down the same story for change, the same what and the same how?

[Julia Dhar]

And you'll know you have a pretty

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

robust take up plan, a good plan for behavioural shifts. If you know who you expect to change, what behaviors you want them to do and could explain to someone why you think it's likely that they will be able and willing to do that.

[Adi Ignatius]

And do you have an example in your head of a company that has gone through a transformation that just should be inspirational to everybody, that they really handled it well and the outcome was positive?

[Julia Dhar]

I think a company that has proven

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

that they can do all of the things that we've been talking about over and over again by keeping the employees who they are making requests of right at the center is Delta Airlines coming out of bankruptcy really at the end of that period of the company's history. And remember, Delta Airlines is 101 years old. This year, 100,000 people work there instituted a practice that exists to this day which is called Velvet. And Velvet is effectively an opportunity for senior executives and leaders across the organization to spend time with, appreciate, recognize, but also to hear from and to speak with employees across their organizations. Cabin crew mechanics check in agents, baggage handlers. And in doing that, they are living up to a very, very strong theory of change that has existed and has been talked about but also lived throughout the company's history, which is if senior leadership take good care of employees, employees will take good care of customers and customers who have been taken care of

[Julia Dhar]

will lead to shareholders and the share

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

price and financial performance taking care of itself. There's a lot that is wrapped around that as an organizational strategy. Velvet is one really obvious example of ways in which people literally physically come together and get appreciated. It gets matched in terms of the incentive program with profit sharing and other ways to directly appreciate people's efforts.

[Julia Dhar]

But to me, that is a really

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

good example of saying we have a really clear understanding of how all of our different stakeholders come together to change. We ask leaders to change before we ask employees to change and we ensure that their incentives are aligned to do so so that we are not asking people to volunteer for a change that they themselves will never see the benefit of.

[Adi Ignatius]

Julia, I want to thank you for being our guest on the HBR IdeaCast.

[Co-author (possibly Christy Elmer or Philip Jamison)]

Thank you very much for having me.

[Adi Ignatius]

That was Julia Dhar, managing director and partner at Boston Consulting Group and co author of the the book How Change really seven Science Based Principles for Transforming youg Organization. Next week, Allison looks at how leaders often overthink their problems and what they can do about that. If you found this episode helpful, share it with a colleague. And be sure to subscribe and rate IdeaCasts in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. If you want to help leaders move the world forward, please consider subscribing to Harvard Business Review. You'll get access to the HBR mobile app, the weekly Exclusive Insider newsletter, and unlimited access to HBR Online. Just head to hbr.org subscribe and thanks to our team, Senior Producer Mary Du, Audio Product Manager Ian Fox and Senior Production Specialist Rob Eckhart. And thanks to you for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. We'll be back with a new episode on Tuesday. I'm Adi Ignatius.