Three Capabilities for Change to Work
I have thought about this many times because I have seen it repeat across different organizations, of different sizes, in different sectors, and even in different countries: when an organizational transformation fails, it is almost never because of the technical decision itself. The new platform, the process redesign, the merger of two teams, the adoption of an agile methodology; in general, the technical diagnosis is usually sound. What fails is what happens, or what does not happen, around that decision. The circumstances surrounding it, which are often taken for granted and end up being the ones that determine whether the change actually happens or stays on paper.
This is not just my impression. Prosci, one of the leading consultancies in change management, has documented for years that poor communication between leaders and employees is one of the most recurring obstacles in transformation initiatives. And a body of academic literature on the subject, cited repeatedly for more than two decades, holds that around 70% of change programs fail to reach their objectives, and that the cause is frequently attributed to communication failures. It is a figure worth taking with some caution, since its origin is disputed among academics, but the pattern it describes is consistent with what anyone who has been part of a transformation process recognizes immediately.
And that is where the central idea of this article comes in. There are three capabilities that are almost always treated as separate things, with different owners, different budgets, and even different departments, when in practice they work together or simply do not work at all.
The first is strategic communication, which explains the why. Announcing a change is not enough, no matter how clear the memo, the email, or the presentation is. Leaders need to listen to how different teams receive the message and adjust it based on that reaction, because every area interprets change through its own position and its own fears. When this fails, people execute without understanding what for, and that is when resistance begins, which in turn gets read from the top as "lack of commitment," which leads to more control, less room to ask questions, and ultimately can push the project toward failure. Research on communication during change processes insists on the need for a two-way approach: not only informing, but also picking up the signal coming back and responding to it.
The second is change management, which is an entirely different story. It is about people actually starting to do things differently, not just understanding them in a workshop or nodding along in a meeting. It requires analyzing impacts by area, building concrete capabilities, and accompanying the transition for as long as it takes, which is almost always longer than the original timeline anticipated. I have seen projects with flawless communication, clear messages, visible leaders, a coherent narrative, that stayed as pure intention because nobody prepared the teams for the next step: new tools, new workflows, new ways of making decisions that require skills people do not yet have.
And the third, which is almost always left for last or forgotten altogether, is knowledge management. Decisions need to be documented, lessons learned along the way need to be shared, and those lessons need to be kept somewhere someone else can find them later. Without this, every new transformation starts almost from zero, even if the organization has already gone through something similar two or three times before. Organizations like APQC, which have spent decades researching knowledge management on a cross-industry comparative basis, have insisted that organizational learning and change management cannot be treated as independent disciplines: the knowledge generated during a transformation process is, at the same time, the input that makes the next one easier. When that knowledge is not documented or shared, the organization repeats mistakes it had already made, just under a different project name.
What is most interesting, and the reason I insist on seeing these as one single conversation rather than three separate functions, is that these capabilities feed each other. What gets documented during a process improves the next round of messaging, because it makes it possible to anticipate which questions each team will ask and which resistance is predictable. What is learned in the field, in informal conversations, in the emails nobody reads and the ones they do, feeds the next communication strategy. It is not a linear process where you first communicate, then manage the change, and finally document it. It is a cycle, and like any cycle, you can enter it at any point, but it only works if it eventually closes.
In my experience working with international development organizations, the private sector, academia, and government, the pattern repeats with different nuances but the same root: a lot gets invested in deciding what to change, and very little in sustaining how it is communicated, how it is accompanied, and how what is learned gets kept. And it is precisely these three things, taken together, that determine whether a transformation stays a good idea or becomes the way the organization actually works from then on.
Spanish-language research on the topic points in the same direction. A study published in Obra Digital on internal communication, innovation, and change management concludes that internal communication functions as a strategic leadership area that directly influences knowledge transfer and the legitimization of leadership during transformation processes, not as a support function activated after the decision has already been made. And another academic paper, focused specifically on the link between internal communication, knowledge management, and organizational learning, makes a point that connects directly with the idea of the cycle: communication stopped being the spontaneous, informal process that used to happen inside organizations and became a component that has to be managed deliberately, precisely because the knowledge generated during a change process depends on it to actually circulate and stay.
Sources
Prosci, 6 Reasons Why Change Management Fails and How To Avoid Them
The Conference Board, New Insights into Change Management Communication
Castro-Martínez, A. and Díaz-Morilla, P. (2021), La comunicación interna como área estratégica para la innovación a través de la gestión del cambio y la felicidad organizacional, Obra Digital
Influencia de la comunicación interna en la gestión del conocimiento y aprendizaje, Dialnet
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