Why do many change management projects fail?

Several studies, including analyses by McKinsey that are often cited, indicate that a significant share of change programmes do not fully achieve the expected results.

The most frequent causes are not so much technical as organisational and cultural. Among the most recurrent:

• change is sometimes treated as an ‘on/off switch’, without adequate work on the context and on the people involved;
• an alignment is assumed that, in practice, has not yet been built;
• the effort focuses mainly on classroom training, without enough support in day-to-day operations;
• fears about changes of role, status, job security or professional identity are not always addressed explicitly;
• there is a tendency to measure mainly perceptions and statements, rather than the behaviour actually shown in daily work.

When these aspects are not considered systematically, old organisational patterns may tend to reassert themselves, even after structured change programmes.