---
title: Leading change - Linus Murphy
description: What builds and breaks momentum, a practical change roadmap, and
  how to meet resistance without theatre.
url: https://linusmurphy.com/guide/leading-change/
language: en-GB
type: article
author: Linus Murphy
author_url: https://linusmurphy.com/about/
---

[The Leadership Guide · Chapter 6](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/)

# Leading change: momentum, a roadmap and handling resistance

By [Linus Murphy](https://linusmurphy.com/about/) • 18 min read

Focus areas 13, 18, 19: Momentum breakers vs. makers; Creating change: a roadmap; Handle resistance.

![River water splitting around a dark rock, long-exposure current](https://linusmurphy.com/images/guide/ch06-hero.webp)

Momentum makers compound; momentum breakers tax the same week. Change work is mostly which list you feed.

Change does not die in the announcement. It dies in the weeks when the announcement is still on the wall and the diary has gone back to the old job. I have led change as a CEO, and I now sit with CEOs while they try to lead it. The pattern is rarely a lack of intelligence. It is a lack of momentum, a map that never leaves the offsite, and resistance treated as a character flaw instead of information.

This chapter is one job with three names. [Momentum breakers vs. makers](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/leading-change/#momentum-breakers-vs-makers) is the weekly physics: what compounds and what taxes the same seven days. [Creating change: a roadmap](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/leading-change/#creating-change-a-roadmap) is the sequence I actually want on one page — for a life, a career or a company. [Handle resistance](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/leading-change/#handle-resistance) is how you meet the people who are not yet on the bus without turning the bus into a sermon. Separate them and you get a poster, a project office, and a blame story. Hold them together and the working week moves.

I wrote the vision work in [From vision to execution](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/vision-to-execution/). If the sentence cannot be repeated in the warehouse, you have a slide, not a change. The team work sits in [Building winning teams](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/building-winning-teams/). The shorter field note is [build an accountability culture that scales](https://linusmurphy.com/articles/build-an-accountability-culture-that-scales/); the commercial pairing of leader and system is [elite executive coaching that transforms leaders and cultures](https://linusmurphy.com/services/elite-executive-coaching-that-transforms-leaders-and-cultures/).

One number, attributed to the people who published it. [McKinsey wrote in 2015 that 70 percent of change programmes fail to achieve their goals, largely due to employee resistance and lack of management support](https://web.archive.org/web/20240101000000/https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/leadership/changing-change-management). [When people are truly invested, change is 30 percent more likely to stick](https://web.archive.org/web/20240101000000/https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/leadership/changing-change-management). I will come back to both halves. I will not hang that 70 percent on John Kotter. He watched a different set of companies and said a different thing, which I will also quote honestly.

I do not guarantee that your programme will be in the 30 percent. I do not sell a transformation brand. I will help you see whether you are feeding makers or breakers, whether the map has a first visible win, and whether resistance is unpaid wisdom or a standard you still refuse to name.

> If your vision is compelling and credible, your team will contribute with ideas to advance it.

That sentence is mine, and I mean both adjectives. Compelling without credible is a speech. Credible without compelling is a budget. Change that has both starts collecting other people’s ideas. Change that has neither starts collecting other people’s silence.

## Momentum breakers vs. makers

Momentum is not mood. It is the feeling, in the building, that promises made on Monday still mean something on Thursday. Makers compound that feeling. Breakers tax it. Most organisations run both in the same week and then wonder why the campaign feels heavy.

A maker is a kept promise, a visible scoreboard, a short feedback loop, and energy in the room that is not theatrical. A breaker is an unfinished decision, heroics used as a system, gossip after the meeting, and a goalpost that moves once the miss appears. You do not need a culture survey to tell them apart. Watch the seven days after the kick-off.

[Gallup puts at least 70% of the variance in engagement on the manager](https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236570/employees-lot-managers.aspx); a later summary says [70% of a team’s engagement variance is related to management](https://www.gallup.com/workplace/266822/engaged-employees-differently.aspx). Change is not exempt. If you launch a programme and then disappear into the “real work”, you have told the building which list you are on. Management support is whether you are in the room for the first miss.

Employees whose managers [hold regular meetings with them are almost three times as likely to be engaged](https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236570/employees-lot-managers.aspx) as those whose managers do not. Cancel the standing meeting because “the change work is the meeting now” and you have broken the cadence people use to believe you. Keep the meeting. Change the agenda. Open with “what could derail us?” instead of updates.

Feedback is the other weekly physics. [Eighty per cent of employees who received meaningful feedback in the past week are fully engaged](https://www.gallup.com/workplace/357764/fast-feedback-fuels-performance.aspx). Daily versus annual feedback makes people [3.6 times more likely to strongly agree they are motivated to do outstanding work](https://www.gallup.com/workplace/357764/fast-feedback-fuels-performance.aspx). Change programmes that save feedback for a quarterly steering pack are training the organisation to wait. Fast, specific, next-action feedback is a momentum maker. A character study in week six is a breaker.

McKinsey’s 70 percent is largely resistance and lack of management support. Read that as a diary problem before you read it as a communications problem. People resist what they do not trust, and they do not trust leaders who announce a future they are not living. Investment — the 30 percent more likely to stick — is not a survey item. It is whether people can see their own fingerprints on the new way.

Here is the list I actually use. Steal it. Do not decorate it.

| Makers (feed these) | What it looks like in the working week | Breakers (starve these) | What it looks like in the working week |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Kept promises | A date that arrived with the outcome, or an honest miss with an owner | Unfinished decisions | The same call, third meeting, longer pack |
| Visible scoreboard | One lead, one lag, readable without a narrator | Moving goalposts | The target changes once the miss is in the room |
| Short feedback loops | Comment on the work while the paint is wet | Gossip after the meeting | The real conversation happens in the corridor |
| Energy that is not theatre | Humour and dissent still in the room | Heroics as a system | Someone saved the week by ignoring the new rule, and was praised |
| Management in the miss | You stand next to the first failure without humiliation | Kick-off then absence | You appear at the launch and the victory lap |
| A kill | A sacred process is allowed to die | Initiative stacking | The new programme sits on twelve incomplete ones |

Heroics look like momentum. They are not. If someone saves the launch by bypassing the decision right you have just written, thank the save and then repair the right. Otherwise you have taught the company that the new way is optional when someone is talented.

Initiative stacking is the quiet breaker. If you cannot name what you are stopping, you are not changing. You are adding. I have run multi-country businesses through growth that averaged about 45 per cent a year. The weeks that held were the weeks a country MD could see a scoreboard without a visit from me. The weeks that slipped were the weeks I added a “priority” from a plane and left the old ones standing.

![Cast-iron flywheel on a wooden workshop bench, slightly dusty](https://linusmurphy.com/images/guide/ch06-body-1.webp)

*Momentum is a flywheel. You feed it with kept promises, or you tax it with unfinished decisions.*

Morale is whether people still want to be in the moving. You can have grim momentum and a raw room, or cheerful stasis after a culture offsite. I will take grim momentum, and then I will still attend to the room. A scoreboard without air produces the resistance you then misread as disloyalty.

Name the breaker in the room and ask what it is protecting — a fear that has not been allowed to speak, or a status the new way would reduce. If the wrecker is you, start there. CEOs break momentum by reopening closed calls, praising the hero who ignored the process, and treating the programme as something other people should feel. Your calendar is the culture’s first exhibit.

## Creating change: a roadmap

A roadmap is not a Gantt chart with better colours. It is the sequence that takes a place from the old default to a new one without requiring a speech every Monday. I use the same spine for a life, a career or an organisation, because the physics rhyme: attitude (what we believe is now true), behaviour (what we do this week), performance (what we will accept as proof). Skip attitude and people comply until you leave the room. Skip behaviour and you have a belief club. Skip performance and nobody knows whether it worked.

John Kotter, in 1995, [watched more than 100 companies try to remake themselves](https://hbr.org/1995/03/leading-change-why-transformation-efforts-fail-2). Large and small, American and not, some on their knees and some earning good money. The efforts had many banners: total quality, reengineering, rightsizing, restructuring, cultural change, turnaround. [A few were very successful, a few were utter failures, and most landed in between with a tilt towards the lower end.](https://hbr.org/1995/03/leading-change-why-transformation-efforts-fail-2) That is the honest picture. It is not “70 percent fail”. Do not put McKinsey’s number in his mouth.

From the errors he saw, the eight steps are plain enough to write on a page: a sense of urgency; a guiding coalition; a vision; communicating that vision, hard and often; removing obstacles so people can act; short-term wins you can point at; not declaring victory too early; and anchoring the new way in how the place actually works — systems, promotions, the stories you tell about who gets ahead.

Ten years later, Harold Sirkin, Perry Keenan and Alan Jackson looked at the hard side and wrote that [in most organisations, two out of three transformation initiatives fail](https://hbr.org/2005/10/the-hard-side-of-change-management). Soft work without duration, team integrity, leadership commitment and an honest view of extra effort still dies. Have we priced the extra work, named the team, and put senior commitment where a diary can prove it? Tools can help people at the back of the ship see the turn. They cannot replace a coalition or a win.

Here is the one-page map I want. It borrows Lewin’s three movements and Kotter’s eight steps without making you join a church.

| Stage | Plain question | Attitude | Behaviour this fortnight | Performance proof | Common stall |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Unfreeze | Why can we not sleepwalk any more? | A credible threat or opportunity, not a slogan | You stop protecting a sacred process in public | One old metric you are willing to embarrass | Urgency as theatre; no one feels the heat in their diary |
| Coalition | Who will carry this when I am on a plane? | A small group that will tell you the truth | Named owners, including a sceptic with standing | The coalition meets without you and still decides | A steering group of the already-converted |
| Vision | What will the working week look like when this has worked? | One sentence a warehouse can repeat | You use the sentence in real decisions, not only town halls | Someone two levels down can say it without notes | A vision deck that cannot survive a trade-off |
| Communicate | Have we said it ten times more than we want to? | People hear the same story from more than one mouth | Leaders open meetings with the change, then the numbers | A front-line example in every cycle | Under-communication dressed up as “they know” |
| Remove obstacles | What still makes the old way easier? | Permission to kill a rule, a KPI, a hero path | One obstacle actually removed, in writing | Cycle time or a miss that used to hide | New vision, old incentives |
| Short-term wins | What can we point at in 30–90 days? | Belief that this is not another poster | A win collected and told without exaggeration | A number and a name, not a vibe | Waiting for the “real” result before anyone can see movement |
| Do not stop | What would declaring victory too early look like? | Humility after the first win | You press the next system while the credit is still warm | A second win in a harder place | A celebration that returns everyone to the old diary |
| Anchor | How does someone get ahead now? | The new way is how we promote, budget and tell stories | Hiring, bonuses and meeting rhythms match the speech | A promotion that would have been impossible last year | Culture talk; unchanged people systems |

Use that for a company. For a career, shrink it: unfreeze the old identity, one mirror, a sentence about the job you will actually do, a diary rule, one visible handoff in thirty days, and a week that makes the old heroics inconvenient. For a life change I will not pretend coaching is therapy. The same spine applies to behaviour you can inspect. If the material is clinical, we stop.

A short history

Kurt Lewin, working in the 1940s, gave change a three-step picture that is still useful if you do not worship it. Unfreeze: disturb the current default so people cannot sleepwalk. Change (or move): practise the new behaviour. Refreeze: make the new way the path of least resistance so it does not snap back the week you look away. It is a sketch of social physics, not a 90-day programme. I keep it because leaders still try to skip unfreeze (they announce) and skip refreeze (they celebrate and go home).

John Kotter’s 1995 essay is the field note that made the eight errors famous. He watched more than 100 companies. A few very successful, a few utter failures, most in between with a tilt towards the lower end. The eight steps are the errors turned the right way up: urgency, a guiding coalition, a vision, communication of that vision, removing obstacles, short-term wins, not stopping too early, anchoring in the culture. He did not publish a 70 percent fail rate. McKinsey’s 2015 line is a different paper. Use both. Do not mash them into one legend.

Three operating rules I will not negotiate.

**Start with a stop.** Name the initiative, meeting, or report that dies this month so the new work has calories. If nothing dies, you are stacking.

**Make the first win embarrassingly small and embarrassingly public.** Not a transformation. A cycle time. A killed process. A country that ran the miss protocol in seven days. Collect it. Tell it without exaggeration. Wins are how people at the back of the ship notice the turn.

**Put management support where a diary can prove it.** You at the first miss. You at the first time someone is allowed to kill a sacred cow. You in the promotion conversation that would have gone the old way. Absence in the middle is how the 70 percent happens.

![Empty country road forking left and right at dusk, no signpost](https://linusmurphy.com/images/guide/ch06-body-2.webp)

*Resistance often looks like a fork. One road is unpaid wisdom. The other is a standard you will not name.*

The roadmap fails as a waterfall — eighteen months of design, then an ambush — or as permanent pilots with no default. I want a first default in ninety days, small enough that you can still learn. If they only add risks in the corridor, you have an audience, not a coalition.

## Handle resistance

Resistance is not a personality type. It is what people do when the new way threatens something they have not been allowed to put on the table: competence, status, a customer they actually know, a workload that is already too heavy, a scar from the last programme that was announced and then orphaned. If you treat all of it as disloyalty, you will win the room and lose the building.

McKinsey named employee resistance as one of the two large reasons programmes miss their goals. The other was lack of management support. Those two feed each other. People resist when they do not see management living the cost. Management withdraws when resistance makes the programme feel ungrateful. You break the loop by meeting resistance as data, in public, without turning it into a salon.

Amy Edmondson’s line, which I want in this section without turning it into a workshop brand: [psychological safety is not about being nice](https://hbr.org/podcast/2019/01/creating-psychological-safety-in-the-workplace). It is candour — the ability to say “I screwed that up”, to ask for help, to push back on a target that is discovering something about the market. [Amy Gallo’s 2023 explainer](https://hbr.org/2023/02/what-is-psychological-safety) is the short version of a research story that started in the late 1990s. Stretch goals plus closed ears is a recipe for failure. Stretch goals plus open ears is how a strategy meets reality before the reality becomes a scandal.

Resistance, handled well, is often those open ears arriving on time.

I sort it into four piles. The sorting is the work. The speech is not.

**Unpaid wisdom.** Someone can name a customer, a system constraint, or a country reality the plan has not priced. Thank them in the room. Put the fact on the map. If you skip this pile you will relearn it in quarter three, expensively.

**Unpaid fear.** Someone is not sure they will be competent on the other side, or they remember the last time they trusted a launch. Do not mock that. Name the first win that would make the fear smaller. Offer a skill, a pairing, a date. Fear that is allowed to speak often becomes energy. Fear that is shamed becomes sabotage.

**Unpaid workload.** The extra effort was never priced. Sirkin’s hard side is useful here: if the change asks for a day a week and the day job still asks for six, people will resist with their calendar even if they love the vision. Remove something. Do not add a wellness webinar.

**Obstruction.** Someone will not live under a standard they helped write, or they will not live under a standard they quietly refuse to write. Misses arrive with a story. After-meetings are where they are strong. This is not a communications gap. It is a personnel decision you are trying to postpone with workshops. Date the conversation. Use a structure. Do not ambush. Do not hope a town hall will do it.

| What you are hearing | Likely pile | Do this fortnight | Do not do this | If it has not moved in 30 days |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| “The customer will not wear it” plus a named example | Unpaid wisdom | Put the example on the scoreboard; change the plan or disprove the example in the open | Call it negativity | You now have a fact. Use it. |
| “We tried this in 2019” | Unpaid fear | Name what is different; name the first win; pair them with someone who will not perform enthusiasm | Roll your eyes | The fear is now a choice. Ask what would be enough proof. |
| “There are not enough hours” | Unpaid workload | Kill a meeting, a report, or an initiative in writing | Offer inspiration | The workload objection has become a priority objection. Choose. |
| Silence in the room, theatre in the corridor | Mixed; often fear plus obstruction | Ask the question in the room; reward the first truth | Send a survey and wait | Silence after a direct ask is data about safety, or about will |
| Agreement in the meeting, opposite behaviour in the P&L | Obstruction | Evidence, impact, a dated ask, a consequence already written | Another offsite | Role change. You are now in accountability, not change theatre |

Open the next change meeting with the resistance, not the slides. Do not argue with a feeling; ask for the example. Reward the first person who brings you a miss — if the first miss is punished, you will not hear the second. Have the tough conversation yourself when the resistance sits on your team: name, evidence, impact, ask, close. Watch your own resistance. We reopen closed calls, keep a pet process, hire “for chemistry” against the standard we just wrote. If you want investment from other people, they have to see you kill something you liked.

The argument

**Common objection.** If I communicate clearly enough, resistance will dissolve. People resist because they do not understand. More slides, a better town hall, a video from me. Once they get it, they will get on board.

**Counter-argument.** Some people already get it. That is why they are resisting. They can see the unpriced workload, the last orphaned programme, or the customer the model has not met. Communication that does not include a kill, a win and a place to object is just volume. McKinsey’s 30 percent — change more likely to stick when people are truly invested — is not a comprehension score. It is fingerprints on the new way.

**When the opposite is true.** Sometimes the communication really is bad: a vision nobody can repeat, ten messages, no sentence. Fix that first; it is cheap. And sometimes resistance is obstruction from someone who will not live under the standard. Then more slides are a delay tactic you are buying for yourself. Make the personnel move. Kindly, dated, without humiliation — and without a third chance that teaches the building the standard was optional.

Handle resistance without theatre. Adult is the room where a named risk changes the plan, or a named miss changes an owner. The artefacts that make this travel are in [the accountability essay](https://linusmurphy.com/articles/build-an-accountability-culture-that-scales/). If the person and the system have to move together, that is the [elite leadership pairing](https://linusmurphy.com/services/elite-executive-coaching-that-transforms-leaders-and-cultures/). Still no promised outcome. A clearer contract.

Vision without this chapter is a poster. This chapter without vision is compliance. You need both in the working week.

Takeaways

-   Momentum is kept promises, visible scoreboards, short feedback loops and management present at the first miss. Breakers are unfinished decisions, heroics, gossip and moving goalposts.
-   McKinsey, 2015: 70 percent of change programmes fail to achieve their goals, largely due to employee resistance and lack of management support. When people are truly invested, change is 30 percent more likely to stick.
-   Kotter, 1995: more than 100 companies; a few very successful, a few utter failures, most in between with a tilt towards the lower end. Do not attribute a 70 percent fail rate to him.
-   Lewin’s sketch still helps: unfreeze, change, refreeze. Kotter’s eight steps name the work in between. Start with a stop, a small public win, and a diary that proves support.
-   Sort resistance into unpaid wisdom, unpaid fear, unpaid workload, and obstruction. Only the last is a personnel move. The first three are data you are currently paying for twice.
-   Psychological safety is candour, not niceness. Stretch goals plus closed ears is how programmes fail while still looking loyal in the room.

### Reflection questions

1.  Looking at last week, which list did you feed — makers or breakers — and what is the evidence in the diary, not in the speech?
2.  What will you stop this month so the change has calories, and whose status does that stop threaten (including yours)?
3.  Where is the first win you can point at in thirty days, and who at the back of the ship will be able to see it without a narrator?
4.  When resistance last showed up, which pile was it — wisdom, fear, workload, obstruction — and which pile did you treat it as?
5.  Would someone two levels down repeat your change sentence without notes, and if not, is that a vision problem or a communication vanity?
6.  Where does your own resistance sit: a pet process, a reopened call, a hire you are protecting from the standard you just wrote?

Bring the live problem into the room. Not the brand of the programme. The unfinished decision, the person who is strong in the corridor, the meeting you still open with updates. That is the work.

If you want a private look at that map — [book a 30-minute conversation](https://linusmurphy.com/contact/). Bring the change you have already announced, and the week you actually ran after the announcement.

The series

1.  Part 13 of 30[Momentum breakers vs. makers](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/leading-change/momentum-breakers-and-makers/)
2.  Part 18 of 30[Creating change: a roadmap](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/leading-change/creating-change-a-roadmap/)
3.  Part 19 of 30[Handle resistance](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/leading-change/handle-resistance/)

One in-depth article per focus area. [See all 30 parts](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/#series).

## Questions I am asked

**Why do so many change programmes fail?**

McKinsey’s 2015 line is the one I use: 70 percent of change programmes fail to achieve their goals, largely due to employee resistance and lack of management support. When people are truly invested, change is 30 percent more likely to stick. That is not a reason to write a longer deck. It is a reason to put management support and real investment on the table in week one, not in a speech at the end.

**Did Kotter say that 70 per cent of change fails?**

No. John Kotter watched more than 100 companies try to remake themselves. A few were very successful, a few were utter failures, and most landed in between with a tilt towards the lower end. He did not publish a 70 per cent fail figure. That number belongs to later work, including McKinsey in 2015. Use Kotter for the eight errors and the eight steps. Do not hang a fake statistic on his name.

**How do I tell useful resistance from obstruction?**

Ask what unpaid information the resistance is carrying. If someone can name a customer, a system, or a risk the plan has not priced, that is data. If someone will not live under a standard they helped write, and the misses keep arriving with a story, that is a personnel decision. More slides will not fix the second kind.

**What is the first move if momentum has already died?**

Stop announcing. Pick one visible promise you can keep this fortnight, put a scoreboard on it, and have the senior team stand next to the miss in public without humiliation. Momentum returns through kept promises, not through a relaunch brand. If the table cannot hold a miss, you do not have a change problem yet. You have an accountability problem.

**How involved does the CEO need to be?**

You cannot delegate belief. You can delegate a workstream. Management support is one of the two reasons McKinsey gives for failure; your diary is the evidence. If you only appear at the kick-off and the victory lap, people will treat the middle as optional. Be present at the first miss, the first win, and the first time someone is allowed to kill a sacred process.

**Does this apply to a personal career change as well as a company one?**

Yes, with less theatre and the same spine: unfreeze the old identity, change the behaviour, refreeze with a week that makes the old way inconvenient. Attitude, behaviour, performance — in that order if you must order them. A career change that is only an announcement is the personal version of a programme that never leaves the offsite.

## Sources

1.  [Changing change management](https://web.archive.org/web/20240101000000/https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/leadership/changing-change-management) (2015)
2.  [Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail](https://hbr.org/1995/03/leading-change-why-transformation-efforts-fail-2) (1995)
3.  [The Hard Side of Change Management](https://hbr.org/2005/10/the-hard-side-of-change-management) (2005)
4.  [Employees Want a Lot More From Their Managers](https://www.gallup.com/workplace/236570/employees-lot-managers.aspx) (2015)
5.  [How Effective Feedback Fuels Performance](https://www.gallup.com/workplace/357764/fast-feedback-fuels-performance.aspx) (2022)
6.  [Who’s Responsible for Employee Engagement](https://www.gallup.com/workplace/266822/engaged-employees-differently.aspx) (2019)
7.  [What Is Psychological Safety?](https://hbr.org/2023/02/what-is-psychological-safety) (2023)
8.  [Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace](https://hbr.org/podcast/2019/01/creating-psychological-safety-in-the-workplace) (2019)

![Portrait of Linus Murphy](https://linusmurphy.com/images/portraits/linus-headshot.jpg)

**[Linus Murphy](https://linusmurphy.com/about/)**

Elite executive coach

[Book a 30-minute strategy call](https://linusmurphy.com/contact/)

In this guide: [Chapter 3: From vision to execution](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/vision-to-execution/); [Chapter 8: Building winning teams](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/building-winning-teams/).

## Bring the live problem into the room

[Book a 30-minute strategy call](https://linusmurphy.com/contact/)