Another Monday, another “Transformation Project” destined for the corporate graveyard. You know the one. It comes with a 63-slide PowerPoint deck and the faint whiff of dread and disappointment.
Here’s why a staggering 70% of change initiatives fail: Leaders try to force-feed change on people who have eaten enough already. They roll out “synergies” and “paradigms,” dish out branded stress balls, and imagine everyone will suddenly start “thinking differently.” The result? A collective eye-roll and countless Oscar-nominated performances of “quick, look busy, but do the same old thing.”
Here’s the secret they keep missing: You can’t update people like they’re software.
Real, lasting change cannot be downloaded from an email; it’s sparked from within. It happens when people *want* to change because they feel a personal, urgent, unignorable reason to.
Leading marketing teams at giants like Microsoft and Kimberly-Clark, showed me the worst of corporate theatre and the importance of knowing when to ditch it. When we needed to evolve fast, my first step wasn’t to nominate unlucky team members to attend a change management off-site. It was to get them to think about what changes we might need to make. They listened to recordings of unhappy customers. They tried using our own clunky software. They saw firsthand what we were already doing badly.
Suddenly, the need to change was no longer an abstract concept in a slide deck; it was a visceral, shared belief. The best ideas and the passion to make them happen came bubbling up from them, not from me. Never from me.
Your team doesn’t need another ‘thou shallt change’ decree. They need a spark.
In my “ReadyAlready” talks, I don’t deliver case studies; I light a fire. I help your colleagues unlock their own curiosity and start a grassroots movement of positive change, turning them from passive recipients into enthusiastic creators of what’s next.
Ready to start an inferno of creativity? Get in touch – bookings now open from September 2025 to June 2026.
