Change initiatives failing is not a new or unknown phenomenon. A great deal of research has been conducted into why most change programmes fail to deliver what was expected. There are a number of commonly recurring themes in this research:

Lack of Strong Leadership and Sponsorship
Leaders not demonstrating the right behaviours to drive the change forward, instead they are paying it lip service.

Ineffective Planning and Integration
Teams within initiatives producing outputs and meeting deadlines without truly understanding the holistic solution and so not integrating them at the appropriate points. This leads to rework and loss of focus.

Lack of a Clear Vision and Direction 
Individuals and the organisation as a whole not fully understanding the end state and why it is important.

Unclear and Overloaded Priorities
Organisations having too many (often conflicting) priorities. Change initiatives usually measure effectiveness by the volume produced and not the quality – this is why so many programmes have little impact on an organisation’s performance.

Lack of Holistic Approach
Delivering change piecemeal or partially implementing change often results in benefits not being achieved and substantial rework being required in the later stages.

Entrenched Resistance to Change
Individuals within organisations exhibiting ‘wasn’t designed by me’ syndrome. If you don’t have real input to the solution, and don’t understand it fully, then you are likely to resist it.

Lack of Early Benefits
Individuals, teams and organisations as a whole becoming disillusioned with the change initiative if there are no early visible successes. Momentum has to be built and maintained; reailsation of early benefits helps this enormously.

Inappropriate Change Infrastructure
Implementing change initiatives with a change infrastructure that is often either unwieldy, too complex, remote, or worse still, non-existent. This can unnecessarily increase workloads, clutter communication and cause individuals to lose track of what is happening. Little attention is focused on coaching the right people at the right time to optimise the change.