70% of change efforts fail. Here’s what’s interesting about it. It’s the most quoted number in change management, and it does its best work in budget meetings. The number fascinates me. Partly because that’s often when I’m brought in to chart a path forward. Mostly because of how it’s used: to win the room and justify the budget.
Dig below the surface, and change metrics get wobbly, this one included. Published transformation success rates range from 12% to 88%, depending on who’s counting and how success is defined. Which brings me to my favorite observation.
The Watermelon Effect
Have you ever experienced a status meeting where teams report green, but the sidebar conversations tell a different story? That’s a watermelon. Green on the outside, red on the inside. Green wins the room. Green keeps the funding flowing. Green keeps the hard questions at bay.
There’s a time and a place for most metrics. Budget metrics show whether we’re using the investment wisely. Delivery metrics show whether we’re on schedule. Reach metrics show whether the message landed. Outcome metrics show whether the change is working. The watermelon grows when one metric is borrowed to do another’s job, like using an email open rate to justify a budget.
The Steering Test
To make sure each metric is doing its job and steering the work, ask:
Does the metric show what changed in the work itself?
Are we shifting from activity and reach to outcomes? On time is a delivery metric. An open rate is a reach metric. Sustained adoption is an outcome metric, and it’s the one that tells you the change stuck.What specific decision does it drive?
Are we reporting numbers that look good, like training attendance? Or numbers that show whether the solution is simpler than today: more intuitive, less effort, time saved, steps removed? An 80% reuse target, for example, surfaces throwaway work and waste.Will it warn us while there’s still time to pivot?
Does our governance make the work easier or harder? Do our measures look back, or ahead? The best early signals come from the work itself: the questions people ask and the feedback they give. When managers shift from “Why are we doing this?” to “How do I make this work for my team?”, adoption is coming. This matters even more with AI adoption, where logins are easy to count and real change is harder to see.
Show, Then Involve
Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I understand.
On a global web program, we replaced weekly status meetings with weekly live demos for 180 leaders. The work evolved in front of our stakeholders, from North Star to wireframes to finished designs. Then we involved them, with a feedback loop backed by customer data and a weekly report-back on what we’d accepted and why.
A demo shows the true color of the work. The metrics that mattered: Are we acting on the right feedback? Are customer insights validating our hypotheses? Are we delivering value to our customers, staff, organization, and community?
Leaders steered from the customer lens. Issues surfaced while they were still small. And everyone spoke a common language: customer needs and our North Star of 80% reuse.
Where I Start
Whether I’m leading enterprise readiness or supporting a transformation office, one of my first priorities is a steering audit. Every metric goes through the Steering Test. The goal: a shorter dashboard, an honest view of what’s red, and metrics tied to measurable business outcomes and value realization, built into the operating model. Compliance metrics still get tracked and reported, in their own place.
Because when you design for ease of use, adoption follows.
Before your next status review, run your dashboard through the Steering Test. What would it look like if every metric had to steer the work? I’d love to compare notes.
Source: https://strategyu.co/do-70-percent-of-change-initiatives-really-fail/