The Quiet Saboteur: How silence can undermine Transformation before it even begins.
Reading time, 3 minutes
Whilst enjoying some evening sunshine, I read something recently that really resonated with me. In the July/August edition of Harvard Business Review, Julia Dhar, Kristy R. Ellmer and Philip Jameson write about what they call "the false alignment trap," the phenomenon where leadership teams believe they agree on why, what, and how they're changing, when in reality they don't agree at all. Everyone nods in the room. Everyone leaves thinking they're on the same page. And then, weeks later, the plan starts to fray in ways nobody can quite explain.
It's a great piece, and it named something I've seen and felt myself when leading and supporting change, whether in Transformation programmes or driving through more focused initiatives.
The disagreement you never hear
The most dangerous voice in a transformation isn't the one that pushes back in the room. It's the one that says very little.
I've sat in steering committees where every visible signal said "we're aligned" heads have been nodding, actions agreed, next steps assigned. Sometimes just weeks later, one part of the programme slowed to a crawl. Not through open or obvious resistance but through quiet absence. Meetings are deprioritised or not attended, messages to teams left are vague or inconsistent. Decisions technically made but never really owned or actioned.
At best, this slows things down, a programme that limps rather than runs, burning time and goodwill that it’s hard to get back and damages the precious early credibility. At worst, I've seen it actively unravel progress that other parts of the business had worked hard to build, because the silent disagreement of one senior stakeholder filtered down into their team's behaviour, and that inconsistency spread. People stopped trusting the "why" and questioned the commitment to the programme from the top. Once that happens, you're not managing a transformation anymore, you're having to rescue it.
Why the silence happens
This is rarely bad faith. Most people who disagree quietly aren't trying to derail anything, they're avoiding a conversation that feels risky, unresolved, or they believe will be simply unwelcome. That's where culture and psychological safety come in.
If a business's norms reward visible agreement over honest challenge, or if raising a concern is seen as being "not a team player," people will do the sensible thing: they'll comply in the room and resist everywhere else. The false alignment trap that the HBR article refers to isn't just a communication failure, in my view it's often a symptom of a culture where genuine disagreement has nowhere safe to go.
Any transformation programme that doesn't consciously address this, that doesn't build in space for real views, even the uncomfortable ones, in whatever forum can generate that honesty, is at risk before it's even begun.
What actually helps
The most useful intervention I believe, is properly facilitated discussion. Not another status update but a genuine, structured space where people are asked, individually and directly, what they think and where the answer is allowed to be "I'm not sure about this part" without negative consequence.
Done well, this does three things:
It surfaces disagreement while it's still cheap to resolve, rather than months in when it's expensive.
It gives leaders a true picture of alignment, not a performed one.
It signals, through the act of asking, that psychological safety is real rather than a value on a wall.
This rarely happens by accident. It takes someone independent and objective enough to ask the hard questions, skilled enough to hold the room, and credible enough that people trust the process. It is likely to include time spent one to one with key stakeholders to understand the dynamics and thinking styles walking into the room for that discussion.
Where to start
If any of this sounds familiar, a programme that looks aligned on paper but feels different in the room, or teams getting inconsistent messages depending on who they ask, it's worth pausing before you push further forward, not after things start to unravel. Your organisation’s early experience of transformation sets the tone, so it’s important to tackle issues at pace.
This is exactly the kind of work we do at Great Oaks Transformation: facilitating the honest conversations that transformation programmes need but rarely get, and then providing hands-on support to keep momentum once alignment is real. If you'd like to talk through what this could look like for your organisation, let’s have e a conversation.
Reference: Julia Dhar, Kristy R. Ellmer and Philip Jameson, "The False Alignment Trap," Harvard Business Review, July–August 2026.
