Why Change Efforts Fail: The Missing Ingredient

The following is adapted from Practice Makes Culture by Christine Hudson and Ronica Roth, coming June 2026 from IT Revolution.

You followed the playbooks. You created urgency, enlisted sponsors, communicated the vision, provided training. You leveraged Kotter’s “8 Steps” and worked through the ADKAR model. And yet, the changes still aren’t sticking. Or it’s taking longer than expected. Or people are going through the motions, but your results haven’t improved.

You’re not alone—and it’s not because you’re doing it wrong.

Christine Hudson and Ronica Roth have spent two decades working with hundreds of leaders trying to transform their organizations—from startups to Fortune 500 enterprises, from local governments and nonprofits to global NGOs. These organizations invested in new processes, tools, and training. They communicated their vision. They enlisted sponsors, created change plans, implemented—and adapted—those plans as they learned more.

And yet, so many of these efforts still stalled or failed entirely.

The pattern Hudson and Roth kept seeing was striking: Leaders were addressing the what, the how, and the why of change, but they were consistently underestimating the human dimension—the emotional dynamics, the unspoken fears, and the cultural habits that either enable or sabotage even the most well-designed initiatives.

The Funny Things About Humans

What’s been missing from traditional change models is a deep understanding of how human neuropsychology interacts with organizational culture to derail even well-executed change efforts. After all, unsuccessful change efforts have a single common link: humans. Humans trying to work together to build something bigger than any one of them could build alone.

In Practice Makes Culture, Hudson and Roth identify several “funny things about humans” that undermine change:

Humans value what they own and build. Research on psychological ownership shows that when people feel ownership over something—whether it’s an idea, a process, or a decision—they value it more. The flip side is equally true: When change is done to people rather than with them, they’re less likely to commit to it.

Humans filter new information through old beliefs. We fit new data into our existing mental models, often distorting or ignoring what doesn’t fit. That brilliant change rationale you communicated? It may have been received very differently than you intended.

Humans prefer the status quo. Research shows we prefer familiarity and are reluctant to disrupt existing routines, practices, and beliefs—even when we know change would benefit us. The increased value of the current option varies based on decision importance, switching costs, and personality differences, but the bias is remarkably consistent.

Humans think they can do more than they can. We overestimate what we can accomplish in an hour, a day, a quarter. As a result, organizations tend to have too many large initiatives and major change efforts in flight simultaneously. When there’s more work than can be accomplished, people rush between tasks, deliver low-quality work, and hide that they haven’t completed things.

Humans get stressed out about change. Change fatigue comes from the overload of too many competing changes, from the pace of change with no time to stabilize, and from the emotional costs of adapting to new roles and learning new systems. When cognitive fatigue sets in, people start choosing easier, lower-impact options—or avoidance.

The Three Layers of Culture

These human factors operate across three distinct layers of organizational culture that Hudson and Roth describe:

The everyday culture is visible in how meetings run, how decisions get made, and how people interact day to day. It’s what you experience walking into the office or joining a video call.

The business operating system includes the stated processes, policies, incentive structures, and governance mechanisms. This is what gets documented in handbooks and org charts.

The hidden stories are the unspoken beliefs, assumptions, and narratives that shape behavior beneath the surface. These are the things people “just know” but rarely say out loud: Which rules can be bent, whose opinions really matter, what happens to people who fail.

Most change efforts focus on the middle layer—the operating system—while underestimating or ignoring the other two. But all three layers must shift together for change to stick.

The Missing Ingredient

So what’s the missing ingredient? Practice.

Culture isn’t what you say—it’s what you practice every day. As Hudson and Roth put it, the values you established and wrote down matter far less than whether you practice them—in how you hire, coach, disagree, and make decisions when the stakes are high. Over time, repetition turns values into culture, and culture into a lasting edge.

This insight changes everything about how we approach organizational transformation. Instead of focusing on communication campaigns and training sessions, the focus shifts to what behaviors get practiced—in every meeting, every conversation, every decision.

It means change happens one interaction at a time: in how you open a meeting, how you respond when someone shares a risky idea, how you handle disagreement. These small moments, consistently practiced, create the conditions for larger change to take hold.

What This Looks Like in Practice

At LPL Financial, leaders weren’t just transforming technology—they were transforming how people led. As David Ward, then SVP of Technology, describes it: “Everyone had a seat, a voice, and the chance to show their value—from executives to programmers.” The transformation turned silence into courage, hierarchy into connection, and attempted change into meaningful results.

How? Not through better slide decks or more compelling town halls. Through deliberate practice of new behaviors in real work contexts. Through creating ownership by involving people in the change, not just informing them of it. Through naming the elephants—the unspoken concerns that everyone knows but no one discusses.

These practices sound simple, but they require intentional effort and consistent repetition. They require leaders to show up differently, meeting after meeting, week after week.

Starting Where You Are

The good news is that you don’t need a massive transformation program to begin. You can start practicing new behaviors in your very next interaction. Ask a genuine question instead of making a statement. Name something that everyone is thinking, but no one is saying. Invite input before announcing a decision.

These small shifts, consistently practiced, begin to change the everyday culture around you. And when the everyday culture shifts, the hidden stories start to change too. People start to believe that new behaviors are possible—because they’re seeing them happen.

That’s how change efforts succeed: not through better planning, but through better practice.

Christine Hudson and Ronica Roth are the authors of Practice Makes Culture, coming June 2026 from IT Revolution. They are cofounders of The Welcome Elephant consultancy.

- About The Authors

Leah Brown

Managing Editor at IT Revolution working on publishing books and guidance papers for the modern business leader. I also oversee the production of the IT Revolution blog, combining the best of responsible, human-centered content with the assistance of AI tools.

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