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Field notes

What the evidence says.What to do on Tuesday.

Short reads on change, leadership and work. Every claim sourced, every note ending with something you can try.

  1. The 70 percent figure nobody can findThere is a number that turns up in almost every change kickoff. Seventy percent of change programmes fail. It sits on slide three, usually in a large font, usually without a footnote.5 min read
  2. Resistance is informationMost change plans we see have a box marked "resistance". It usually sits near the end, under risks, with a mitigation next to it. Communicate more. Find champions. Manage the blockers.5 min read
  3. Why the plan wobbles by TuesdayIt is a familiar pattern. The offsite goes well. The leadership team agrees the priorities, signs up to new ways of working and leaves the room genuinely committed. By the following Tuesday, the diary looks exactly the way it did before.5 min read
  4. How change is done shows up in people's healthMost change plans have a line about wellbeing. An employee assistance number, a resilience webinar, a reminder to take leave. All useful. All, on the evidence, aimed at the wrong end of the problem.6 min read
  5. Smart technology at work: what the evidence actually saysMany leadership teams have had some version of the same conversation this year. Somebody has seen a demo. Somebody else has read that it will change everything. A third person quietly wonders whether anyone has checked.6 min read
  6. Change on top of changeChange rarely arrives one programme at a time. The research suggests frequency and repetition carry their own risk, which makes sequencing, pausing and stopping a leadership job.5 min read
  7. Where change actually gets decidedStrategy gets written in the boardroom. Research on middle managers shows how much of it gets decided in the conversations that follow, and what leaders can do to equip them.5 min read
  8. Ninety days is the wrong clockThe 90-day plan is a useful start and a poor finish line. Why senior hires take longer to land, and why acceptance by the existing team is the slow part.5 min read
  9. The culture you didn't buyEvery deal buys a culture. The research shows cultural difference can cost and can pay, so the real question is which differences matter for this deal.5 min read
  10. How do you know it's working?A green status report can mean the programme ran, not that anything changed. How to measure activity, adoption and results separately, in plain words.5 min read

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