The difficult part of transformation is not creating movement. It is sustaining leadership attention when movement becomes inconvenient.
The launch of a transformation creates its own energy. The rationale is made visible. Leaders speak with urgency. Workstreams are established, milestones agreed and people invited to participate in an important organisational future.
Several months later, the atmosphere is different.
The work is more complex than the original plan suggested. Benefits are taking longer to appear. Key people are carrying transformation responsibilities alongside demanding operational roles. Early decisions have created consequences that now require further choices. The executive team is drawn toward new priorities.
Nothing has formally stopped. Yet momentum is weakening.
This is the transformation middle: the period after mobilisation and before new capability, behaviour and performance are embedded. It receives less attention than the beginning or the result, but it is where leadership discipline is most severely tested.
Research reviews of organisational change emphasise that successful transformation depends on a sequence of mutually reinforcing practices, including a compelling diagnosis, capable leadership, participation, aligned systems and continuing assessment.[1] McKinsey’s work on long-term transformation impact similarly stresses sustained commitment, role modelling and the infrastructure needed to keep delivery connected to value.[2]
The central lesson is that transformation cannot live indefinitely as an exceptional programme beside the business. It must progressively change how the business is led.
Four forms of momentum
Leaders often speak about momentum as though it were a single force. In practice, transformation requires at least four forms.
Strategic momentum is confidence that the change still addresses a problem worth solving. Decision momentum is the ability to resolve the choices and trade-offs exposed by the work. Delivery momentum is visible progress in capability, process and outcomes. Social momentum is the growing belief that leaders are serious and the new direction is becoming real.
These forms interact. Delivery slows when decisions remain unresolved. Social confidence falls when executives cease to model the change. Strategic confidence weakens when activity is reported without evidence of value.
A transformation office may coordinate plans and provide transparency. It cannot substitute for these forms of leadership.
Where the middle begins to fail
Attention moves before the organisation has moved
Senior leaders live in an environment of competing demands. Once a transformation appears to be mobilised, it is natural to turn toward the next issue. But the organisation reads the withdrawal of attention as a change in priority.
This does not require executives to manage every workstream. It requires them to remain present at the points only they can influence: enterprise trade-offs, resource shifts, role-model behaviour and barriers created by the existing system.
Workstreams deliver while value remains unclear
Large programmes can become highly proficient at reporting completion. The risk is that delivery units optimise their own milestones without a shared view of whether the organisation is gaining the intended customer, commercial or performance benefit.
Benefits should not sit in a document owned by finance or the programme office. They should shape sequencing and decision-making. When evidence suggests that an activity is not producing value, leaders need the courage to redesign or stop it rather than protect sunk effort.
The old organisation continues to win
Transformation asks people to act differently, while existing measures, structures and incentives often reward continuity. A new cross-functional process is introduced, but leaders are still evaluated through functional outcomes. Greater delegation is encouraged, but important decisions continue to rise. Experimentation is praised, but every setback is treated as failure.
Beer and colleagues have long argued that development efforts fail when the organisational system continues to reproduce old behaviour.[3] The same principle applies to transformation. Communication cannot overcome contradiction forever.
The human cost stays invisible
Transformation plans describe milestones more readily than cumulative load. The people most capable of leading change are often also central to current performance. They carry both systems until one is retired.
Fatigue is not simply resistance. It may be evidence that sequencing is unrealistic, capacity has not moved or leaders have failed to stop lower-value work. Listening to this signal does not weaken ambition. It improves the conditions for delivery.
Lead the middle differently
At launch, leaders create meaning and mobilisation. In the middle, their work becomes more practical.
First, keep the case for change current. The original rationale should be revisited against new evidence. If market conditions or organisational realities have changed, explain what that means. Repeating the launch narrative word for word can sound less like consistency and more like inattention.
Second, shorten the distance between obstacle and decision. Identify the small number of issues that require executive authority and create a reliable route to resolve them. Escalation should not mean failure; in complex transformation, it is often how interdependence becomes visible.
Third, connect benefits to operating performance. Review outcome indicators alongside workstream milestones. Make explicit where value has appeared, where it remains a hypothesis and where delivery must change.
Fourth, retire elements of the old system. Transformation cannot remain additional work indefinitely. Processes, reports, roles and initiatives that no longer support the future model must be stopped. What leaders discontinue is often more persuasive than what they announce.
Finally, create visible evidence of learning. Edmondson’s research on learning-oriented execution shows why organisations need to treat action and learning as connected rather than sequential.[4] Leaders should make it safe to surface weak signals, examine unintended consequences and adjust without blame.
The shift from programme to practice
A transformation is becoming embedded when the new way no longer relies on exceptional attention to survive. Decisions are made through revised accountabilities. Resources follow the future model. Leaders at several levels can explain not only what is changing but why. Performance conversations reinforce the intended behaviour. Customers and employees experience a difference.
That transition should be designed. Workstream ownership needs to move into enduring roles. Governance needs to migrate into the operating rhythm. Temporary capability should leave knowledge behind rather than dependency.
From executive experience, I have found that momentum rarely disappears in one dramatic moment. It erodes through postponed decisions, competing signals and tolerated exceptions. The recovery is equally practical: restore clarity, make the next consequential choices and ensure the organisation can see leaders changing the conditions around the work.
The launch asks, “Can we begin?” The middle asks a harder question: “Are we prepared to lead this until it becomes how the organisation works?”
A transformation midpoint review
- Is the case for change still strategically valid and widely understood?
- Which executive decisions are currently constraining movement?
- Are workstream milestones producing observable value?
- What old work, measure or process should now be retired?
- Where is cumulative load becoming a delivery risk?
- What must move from programme governance into normal operations?
Sources and further reading
- Stouten, J., Rousseau, D. M. & De Cremer, D. (2018), “Successful Organizational Change: Integrating the Management Practice and Scholarly Literatures,” Academy of Management Annals, 12(2), 752–788. https://doi.org/10.5465/annals.2016.0095
- McKinsey & Company (2023), “How to implement transformations for long-term impact.” https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/transformation/our-insights/how-to-implement-transformations-for-long-term-impact
- Beer, M., Finnström, M. & Schrader, D. (2016), “The Great Training Robbery,” Harvard Business School Working Paper 16-121. https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=50953
- Edmondson, A. C. (2008), “The Competitive Imperative of Learning,” Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2008/07/the-competitive-imperative-of-learning
- Kotter, J. P. (1995), “Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail,” Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/1995/05/leading-change-why-transformation-efforts-fail-2