More Frequent Change Calls for Greater Change Leadership

Photographed by Author. San Francisco, CA

Organizations are facing more frequent and disruptive change than ever before. Mergers, new technologies, evolving customer expectations, and shifting workforce dynamics are no longer once-in-a-decade events—they’re constant. In this environment, it’s not enough to manage change. Organizations need leaders who can enable change as a cultural habit.

Some terms—like servant, democratic, or adaptive leadership—describe a style you can adopt. Change leadership is different. It’s not a style. It’s the capacity to project a vision, translate that vision into daily work, and invite others to join in moving it forward. It’s also about scale: the more leaders across levels who feel permission to step into this capacity regardless of their role, the faster the teams adapt and sustain momentum.

Why Change Leadership Really Matters

When organizations lean on just a few leaders to navigate change, they stall. Misalignment at the top slows decisions. Studies published in HBR found that slow decision-making wastes over 500,000 manager days each year in large Fortune 500 companies, costing about $250 million annually. Even once decisions are made, people may simply not be raising their hands to make decisions and bring ideas forth to make the execution possible. Past surveys show that 1 in 5 employees with an idea don’t share it—out of fear. A third of employees feel like their ideas are ignored and almost half feel that good ideas fail to be implemented. The result? Valuable insights never surface, and problems linger longer than they need to.

On the flip side, organizations that emphasize a common purpose are 2.4x more likely to set clear direction and 4.1x more likely to be healthy. That sense of purpose connects priorities to daily work and provides clarity needed to avoid burnout and disengagement. And

Change leadership as a cultural expectation and habit matters because it bridges these gaps: it provides clarity, builds trust, and makes it safe for people to raise their hand.

Signals Your Organization Lacks Change Leadership

How can you tell if this habit is missing in their own organizations? A few signals stand out:

• Ideas aren’t surfacing. People hesitate to speak up or challenge.

• Priorities don’t translate. Teams struggle to connect strategy to daily work.

• Decisions drag on. Important choices stall in meetings or get revisited repeatedly.

• Mixed messages spread. Different leaders frame the vision in conflicting ways.

• People stay quiet. Employees wait for permission instead of taking initiative.

These signals are observable. They show up in how teams talk, how meetings unfold, and how confident people feel about taking action.

Case Study: Dysfunction in Action

Earlier in my career, I worked on a team partnering with a healthcare organization to refresh its strategy. Success depended on strong ownership at the VP level. But through surveys and interviews, it became clear that this group of leaders were paralyzed.

Why? At the executive level, favoritism shaped decisions. VPs quickly learned that advocating for their department needs could put them out of favor. To protect themselves, they chose silence. Instead of stepping into leadership, they waited. That avoidance trickled down: employees described low trust in leadership, unclear priorities, and hesitation to surface problems.

Breaking the cycle to embed ownership beyond executive leaders requires both cultural and structural reinforcement. Change leadership takes root when:

• Vision and expectations are clarified with leaders beyond the executive team.

• Recognition programs lift up wins, shared values and stories of initiative-taking.

• Structures are designed for cross-functional coordination and collaboration.

Our team’s role was to assess and name the issue—bringing to light what was holding the strategy back. We recommended disrupting the pattern through a leadership activation offsite focused on clarifying the vision and expectations amongst select, critical decision makers. The results of this offsite would be reinforced through recognition programs to spotlight and reward wins and process redesigns that increased cross-department coordination amongst VPs to address issues and collective present shared priorities upwards. These recommendations illustrated how the right conditions could transform a stalled strategy into one with real momentum. The value of the assessment was in revealing the why behind the paralysis, and pointing to how the organization could move forward.

Closing Thoughts

At its core, change leadership is about people—creating the safety, clarity, and momentum that allow them to thrive in uncertainty. Organizations that invest in this habit don’t just adapt more quickly; they protect the well-being and energy of their people along the way.

The first step is recognizing the signals. The next is acting on them—intentionally, consistently, and together. If your organization is facing stalled decisions, mixed messages, or hidden ideas, now is the time to activate the change leaders already in your ranks. The cost of waiting is far greater than the cost of building alignment today.