{"id":7281,"date":"2025-06-17T08:49:32","date_gmt":"2025-06-17T06:49:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/uncategorized\/why-do-70-of-strategies-and-changes-fail\/"},"modified":"2025-06-20T08:53:37","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T06:53:37","slug":"why-do-70-of-strategies-and-changes-fail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/governance\/why-do-70-of-strategies-and-changes-fail\/","title":{"rendered":"Why do 70% of strategies and changes fail?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>As it is customary in Estonia, Midsummer and Christmas are the 2 dates by which everything should be settled and in order &#8211; including strategies and goals.<br\/><br\/>Just as around 70% of changes fail to work, around the same proportion of strategies do not materialise, according to various studies.<br\/><br\/>No, it&#8217;s not about knowledge, action plans or KPIs or OKRs or anything else.<br\/><br\/>The point is that something or someone is unconsciously being held back in the system. I see this a lot in my work with managers and teams:<br\/>&#8211; We know what should be done<br\/>&#8211; We agree it&#8217;s important<br\/>&#8211; But we don&#8217;t do it <br\/><br\/>Why?<br\/>From a systems management perspective, there can be several reasons:<br\/>\ud83d\udd39 Loyalty to the old leader or founder whose values and goals were different<br\/>\ud83d\udd39 The original idea of the founder of the organisation vs. today&#8217;s strategy and need<br\/>\ud83d\udd39 Fear, A fear that success means loss of belonging and loss of the familiar<br\/>\ud83d\udd39 Guilt or grief over past decisions and failures<br\/>\ud83d\udd39 Identity associated with suffering rather than development<br\/>\ud83d\udd39 Parental projection onto the leader a la \u201cI will if you love me enough.\u201d<br\/>\ud83d\udd39 Confusion of old roles: the professional who fails to become a leader because he or she is holding on to his or her former place in the system<br\/><br\/>The strategy will not fail because people do not understand. Otherwise, you wouldn&#8217;t have recruited these people if they didn&#8217;t have good comprehension skills. <br\/><br\/>The strategy fails because something deep down inside says so: \u201cI mustn&#8217;t\u201d, \u201cI can&#8217;t\u201d, \u201cthis is not my place\u201d. And it has to be made visible. Management approaches to do this usually don&#8217;t work.  <br\/><br\/>Management problems are often not management problems at all. They are issues of belonging, of permission, of visibility, of guilt, of identity. Behind every problem there is a \u201cwhy the problem exists\u201d and therefore leadership approaches do not work in such situations.  <br\/><br\/>If we don&#8217;t look at these downsides, no action plan will come to life.<br\/><br\/>\ud83d\udccc What do you see in your organisation &#8211; does it feel like everything is in place but nothing is moving? Is this something we can look at together? <br\/><br\/>Summer is a great time to plan such activities for autumn.<\/p>\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"800\" src=\"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Juhtimisprobleemid.jpeg\" alt=\"Management problems are often not management problems at all.  \" class=\"wp-image-7270\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Juhtimisprobleemid.jpeg 800w, https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Juhtimisprobleemid-300x300.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Juhtimisprobleemid-150x150.jpeg 150w, https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Juhtimisprobleemid-768x768.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Juhtimisprobleemid-650x650.jpeg 650w, https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Juhtimisprobleemid-600x600.jpeg 600w, https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Juhtimisprobleemid-100x100.jpeg 100w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As it is customary in Estonia, Midsummer and Christmas are the 2 dates by which everything should be settled and in order &#8211; including strategies and goals. Just as around 70% of changes fail to work, around the same proportion of strategies do not materialise, according to various studies. No, it&#8217;s not about knowledge, action [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-governance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7281"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7281\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7282,"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7281\/revisions\/7282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ivarraav.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}