Successful Change Management Happens in Learning Organizations

In 2013, McKinsey estimated that 70% of organizational change management programs fail.

The Grim Statistics about Organizational Change Management

While this might as well be an urban legend (we have searched in vain for more up-to-date statistics on the matter), each one of us has at least one experience that supports this statistic (and for those who haven’t experienced a complete failure, the resistance to change and the roadblocks in front of the change process are nowhere near what can be qualified as sweet memories).

The Optimistic View on Organizational Change

But enough with the pessimistic, glass-half-empty view of change projects. According to the same statistics, 30% of change management processes were successful.

This means that those implementing the change project were either extremely lucky, or they were doing something right, or the project was happening in an environment that allowed for such organizational change to happen (aka a learning organization).

Before diving deeper into why some organizations are more successful than others at managing change, let’s start with what change management is.