Why Most Change Fails
(And What Nobody's Saying About It)

Look, I'm just gonna say it… Your team isn't resisting change because they're being difficult. They're resisting because you've built a machine they can't breathe inside - and they're too busy trying to survive the day to tell you.

I've watched this movie play out more times than I can count.

A wealth management firm decides it's time to replace its CRM. This is a big deal. We're talking about the heartbeat of the entire operation. So naturally, leadership wants to get it right. They bring in a fancy consultancy with all the best practices. Weekly steering meetings. Gate reviews. Five workstreams running in parallel. Status decks so thick you could use them as doorstops.

On paper? Perfect.

Six weeks in? Total gridlock. Decisions that should take hours are taking weeks. Meetings are multiplying. And the people who actually have to use this shiny new system? They're quietly still using the old one. Returning to shadow spreadsheets on the side. Finding workarounds. Because navigating the "official" process while also trying to do their actual jobs has become impossible.

One COO told me, "We thought more structure would give us control. Instead, it just gave us a theater with quite the performance."

Here's what I've learned... Resistance isn't your problem. Suffocation is.

What suffocation actually looks like (and why you keep missing it)

You don't see suffocation happening in real time. What you see are the symptoms… Missed deadlines, people mentally checking out in meetings, that passive "sure, sounds good" energy that means absolutely nothing is going to change.

And you think it's an execution problem. Or worse, a people problem.

But here's what's really going on behind the scenes... Your people are already running on empty.

They're going inbox to inbox, task to task, meeting to meeting. There's no buffer. No slack in the system. No time to actually think.

Now you're asking them to learn an entirely new system - while maintaining full speed on everything else. So what do they do? They treat it like just another box to check. They show up to training. They nod in the meetings. But do they actually integrate this new way of working into their daily reality? Probably not. That takes mental space and breathing room they simply don't have.

You're piling on structure because it makes you feel safer.

I get it. When you're nervous about a massive initiative, the instinct is to add guardrails. Three levels of approval for every single CRM configuration change. Multiple sign-offs. Documentation for everything.

The goal of doing this? It's to prevent mistakes. And manage risk.

But the result? Decisions that should take two days are taking two weeks. The whole project slows to a crawl. And not because the work itself is complicated, but because the process you've wrapped around it is suffocating everyone involved.

Your message isn't actually landing.

You announce to the firm, "We're modernizing our tech stack to drive operational efficiencies and enhance the client experience."

But what your advisor actually hears, "Something's changing. I don't really know what it means for me specifically. I don't have time to figure it out. I'm just gonna keep my head down and keep doing what I know works."

It's this gap between what you're saying and what they're hearing where adoption goes to die.

There's nowhere safe to tell the truth.

When change feels overwhelming, people need a place to voice concerns, ask the dumb questions, and actually process what's shifting. But if your culture punishes doubt - or if the pace doesn't allow for real dialogue - that pressure just builds with nowhere to go.

I've seen this happen in steering meetings where teams smile and say "yes, we're on track" while privately venting their actual concerns in side channels or Slack DMs after the meeting ends.

They're not being sneaky or defiant. They just haven't been given a safe container to say what's actually true...This pace is unsustainable. This structure doesn't fit how we work. I don't feel safe telling you what I actually need.

The thing most leaders completely miss

Your people don't hate change. What they hate is that the way you're leading this particular change is fundamentally incompatible with how they're already working.

When people are barely keeping their heads above water, they can't think about change in any meaningful way. They can only react to it. And when you pile rigid governance and heavy process on top of people who are already maxed out? You don't get alignment. You get complacent compliance if you're lucky. Or quiet rebellion if you're not.

And the leaders who actually succeed at driving change? They create space for people to move inside the change. Space to ask questions without looking stupid. Voice concerns without being labeled resistant. Make mistakes without being punished. Integrate new ways of working without feeling like they're drowning.

Three questions to ask yourself right now

1. Are your people proving they're working or actually working?
If your governance model requires weekly status reports, multiple layers of approval, and constant updates just to show progress, you've optimized for visibility - not velocity. When your team is spending more time documenting what they're doing than actually doing it, that's suffocation in action.

2. If you cut one layer of structure, what would break? What would accelerate?
Some structure is absolutely load-bearing. You need it. Period. But a lot of what gets added to change initiatives is pure performance. It makes you feel more in control without actually improving outcomes for anyone. Be brutally honest with yourself… How much of your governance is there to manage real risk, and how much is there to manage your own anxiety?

3. Can you explain why you're doing this in one clear sentence - to anyone on your team?
I'm not talking about a business case. Not a deck with seventeen slides. Just a simple, human explanation like... Here's what's changing, here's why it matters, and here's what it means for you. If you can't do that for every level of your organization - from the C-suite to the person who just started last month - you haven't translated. You've just announced. And announcements don't create buy-in.

One more question for you

If you're in the middle of leading a major change initiative, or if you've been handed one while everything else in your world stays equally urgent - pause for a second and ask yourself this... 

Am I building something people can actually breathe inside, or am I just adding more weight to people who are already carrying too much?

If you're an executive seeing resistance, delays, or that quiet disengagement that's somehow worse than open conflict - the problem probably isn't your people. It's not even your strategy. It's the structure you've built around the change itself. I partner with firms as a fractional Chief of Staff to redesign how change actually moves through an organization. I create clarity without suffocation. Oversight without theater performance. And adoption that actually sticks because people have room to breathe inside it.

If you're a leader or team trying to navigate change without burning yourself (or your people) out in the process - I see you. And you're not crazy for thinking there has to be a better way. I teach leaders how to run transitions with actual balance. Structure that works, not structure that just looks impressive in a slide deck.

Next time, I'll walk you through what breathable governance actually looks like in practice - the specific structures, rhythms, and practices that make change sustainable instead of suffocating.

Until then, keep breathing.
Erica

P.S. While you're busy making sure your team can breathe inside the change, are you able to breathe? If you've blown past the warning signs and you're feeling depleted, numb, just-get-through-the-day energy - I made something for you. My Career Crossroads Quiz helps you remember who you are (not who you think you should be) and what comes next. Three minutes, brutally honest questions. Take it here.