Why do so many transformation programmes fail? It’s often the leadership, not the model or tools.

After 25 years in the corporate world, including as a Transformation Director, Great Oaks Founder Kate knows what the research says but more importantly, she knows what she’s seen.

5 min read · Transformation & Change Leadership

Seventy percent of transformation programmes fail to meet their objectives, and by some accounts it’s even higher. We’ve all seen that statistic and have probably decided that our transformation programmes will be different. There is, however, an uncomfortable truth buried underneath that figure that we need to address.

The failure is almost never the methodology, it is almost always human. Maybe the political capital behind the change ran out. Maybe senior sponsorship wasn’t genuine or got distracted when times got tough. Maybe the change leaders were technically capable but personally underprepared for what the role would demand of them. I know that in my early days in transformation I wasn’t prepared for the level of sustained energy that I would need to muster.

I’ve seen the brightest and most experienced professionals walk into transformation programmes and get gradually beaten by the complexity and level of demand that they weren't equipped to handle. It wasn’t because they weren’t fit for the role, they had the knowledge and were brilliant human beings, but it was because nobody had ever properly invested in developing and supporting them as people.

The good news is that it’s a totally solvable problem. Coaching and mentoring solve it. So why do they remain chronically underused in our profession? When so much of transformation success relies on so few people, why would you not invest in their success as you would do other drivers of transformation?

The isolation problem nobody talks about

Change management is structurally lonely. You are, by the nature of the role, responsible for holding everyone else's anxiety about the future while managing upward to sponsors who often don't fully understand what you do, and managing outward to stakeholders who didn't ask for the change that you're delivering. It’s tough and it’s not talked about enough.

In most organisations, there is nobody senior to you who has actually done this job. Your line manager is unlikely to have been a Change Director. There is often no obvious peer group internally. The profession is young enough that the infrastructure of support: the mentors, the networks or the wisdom simply doesn't exist at scale.

The result is a lot of highly capable people developing through trial and expensive error, in isolation, under conditions of sustained pressure.

"Technical skills get you into the role. What determines how far you go, and more importantly whether you survive it intact, is your capacity for self-awareness, your ability to regulate under pressure, and your willingness to keep developing."

That is not a “soft” observation. Research on change leadership points in the same direction. The differentiator at the senior end of this profession is not technical competence — it is personal mastery.

What coaching does that training cannot

Training gives you frameworks. Don’t get me wrong, those of us in transformation love a good framework but they are rarely the solution to human issues. Coaching, however,  gives you the capacity to use those frameworks under pressure, when you're tired, when the stakeholder room is hostile or worse, disengaged, and when your instinct is to revert to the version of yourself that feels safest rather than the version the situation demands.

I have coached and mentored change leaders across various levels of seniority. The presenting issues are different but the themes are not. They include: the tension between being liked and being effective. Honestly, as an extrovert with a natural instinct to people please, I found that one really tough to master. The erosion of confidence that happens quietly over a long, difficult programme. The political capital being spent in the wrong places because the strategic picture isn't clear enough. The inability to say no, or get other people to say no, or just to say it in a way that lands.

None of these are solved by another qualification. They are solved by rigorous, expert, one-to-one work with someone who understands both the coaching process and the world you're operating in. That combination of ICF trained and accredited methodology and 25 years of lived experience is what makes the difference between a coach who nods intelligently and one who actually gets it.

What mentoring does that coaching cannot

Earlier in a change or transformation career, the need is different. The question is not 'how do I lead at my best?' It is 'how does this profession actually work, and how do I build a career in it?'

Mentoring is experience transfer. It is someone with years of experience behind them sitting with someone who is on a steep learning curve, and helping differentiate between what matters, what doesn't, what to fight for, what to let go, and what the unwritten rules of the game actually are.

As yet, the transformation profession has no formal apprenticeship or graduate scheme and no built-in route from practitioner to senior leader with guardrails along the way. It’s often managed by leaders who have different functional expertise and cannot help to develop these skills with their direct reports. I hope that this changes in time but until then mentoring is how you build those guardrails. Commercial, structured mentoring — rather than the informal, patchy kind when someone has time, is how you ensure the quality is consistent and the outcomes are real.

"Mentoring is not career advice. Done well, it is career acceleration — structured, experienced, outcome-focused work that compresses a decade of development into a fraction of the time."

The honest question

If you are leading transformation at any level ask yourself this: when did you last invest in yourself or your team with the same discipline that you apply to your programmes?

You would not run a major change programme without a structured plan, clear objectives, and expert support. Most change leaders run their own development on a fraction of that investment, sporadically, when time allows.

From my experience, time will not allow you to create neat spaces for your development, so you have to make the time for the sake of your transformation programme and for yourself. The return on investing in your own development as a change professional is, in my experience, one of the best returns you will achieve for your career, for your wellbeing, and for the organisations you serve.

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Kate works with change leaders and transformation professionals at all career stages, offering executive coaching for senior leaders and practitioners to structured mentoring for those earlier in their careers. If any of this article has resonated with you, then setting up a conversation with Kate is a great next step. Great Oaks doesn’t “do” hard sells, so there’s no obligation and it may be the best 30mins you spend this week

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Kate Haskins is an ICF registered coach and former Transformation Director with 25 years of corporate experience. She works with change and transformation professionals as a coach, mentor, and transformation consultant. Kate founded Great Oaks Transformation to help serve the unmet needs she saw in Business Transformation.