You Don't Need Another Change Framework
You Don't Need Another Change Framework
Where Good Change Goes Bad
You don't need another change framework. You've probably already tried several.
Maybe you've worked through Kotter's 8 steps. Perhaps you've trained your team on ADKAR. You might even have a beautifully designed change roadmap gathering digital dust in your shared drive. Yet here you are, worried you're going to join the graveyard of the 70% of change efforts that fail.
Here's what's missing: Frameworks tell you what to do, not how to navigate through the specific realities of change. They treat behavior change as steps to check off rather than recognizing that ALL of change happens through conversations and human dynamics. They give you the boxes but not the reality of what happens when your perfectly logical plan meets what people actually do on Tuesday morning.
Traditional change management focuses on process and structure. But real change activation—actually getting people to adopt new behaviors and ways of working—requires something different. It requires understanding the human elements of change: why people nod in meetings but resist in hallways, why great energy in week one becomes old habits by week three, why the vision that's crystal clear to leadership looks like extra work to everyone else.
The Human Architecture of Change
This isn't another change framework—it's a roadmap for outcomes and a diagnostic lens for any result you're after, including organizational change. The Architecture of Outcomes (adapted from Bob Dunham & rooted in Fernando Flores' work) reveals how all results follow a predictable cascade:
Cares → Conversations → Commitments → Actions → Results
[insert diagram : Architecture of Outcomes]
Every change initiative, every strategic goal, every transformation effort follows this flow. And more importantly, when elements along this chain are missing, results are jeopardized. When you can identify exactly what's missing, you know precisely which conversations need to happen and which behaviors need attention.
Here's the key: Conversations are the crux, the basic unit of work that unlocks or blocks change. They're the water that flows through the entire system. When the necessary conversations don't happen, or happen only on the surface, the cascade breaks down and change fails.
Think of it like diagnosing a plumbing problem. You don't need a new theory of water flow—you need to find where the leak is. Once you locate the breakdown point, the intervention becomes obvious. Likewise, you don't need another change framework, you need to find the break in the architecture that leads to aligned outcomes.
Why does this matter for change activation? Because most organizations treat change like a communication problem ("we just need to explain it better"), a process problem ("we need better project management"), or a systems problem ("we just need a better tool"). But change and adoption are fundamentally about human behavior, and behavior emerges from this cascade centered on conversations and commitments.
When good change goes bad, it's rarely because the strategy was wrong or the change a bad idea. It's because somewhere in this human cascade, the real conversations stopped flowing.
The Five Breakdown Points
Let's examine each point in the cascade to understand how breakdowns manifest and what's often missing:
1. Cares: The Foundation Everyone Assumes They've Built
What it means: Understanding what motivates the change—which is different for different people. This isn't just about the organizational "why" but about how each person connects the change to what matters to them.
The missing conversations that signal breakdown:
"For the sake of what are we doing this?"
"How does this connect to what matters for me and my team?"
"What happens if we don't change?"
"What's possible if we do?"
Diagnostic questions: Can people articulate their personal "why" for this change? Not the company line, but their actual reason for caring? When asked why this change matters, do they give you the corporate talking points or something that lights up their eyes?
Red flag: Leadership assumes buy-in because they announced the organizational "why" in an all-hands meeting. People nod along but can't connect the grand vision to their daily reality.
2. Conversations: Where Understanding Lives or Dies
What it means: Conversations are the basic unit of work where we seek to understand cares, align on a shared future, negotiate trade-offs, and create agreements. This is where the real work of change ignites—or doesn't.
The missing conversations that signal a breakdown:
"What does this mean for my day-to-day work?"
"What stops to make room for what starts?"
"What concerns or problems can we identify?"
"What if we tried it differently?"
Diagnostic questions: Are we truly aligned and committed, or just avoiding conflict? If not, why not? Are people having different conversations in the hallway than in the meeting room?
Red flag: Surface-level agreement without real understanding or commitment. Everyone says "sounds good" but no one asks the hard questions. The real conversations happen after the meeting, in private.
3. Commitments: The Accountability Moment
What it means: Clear, specific agreements about future action—not vague head-nods or diplomatic non-answers. A commitment is a clear agreement about what will be done or achieved.
The missing conversations that signal a breakdown:
"When you say 'I'm on board,' what specific actions will you take?"
"What will you deprioritize to make this happen?"
"By when will we see this change in your area?"
"What does success look like in measurable terms?"
Diagnostic questions: Can people state their specific commitments? Do they have permission to say no? Have they explicitly renegotiated other commitments to make room for these new ones?
Red flag: Vague agreements like "we'll do our best" or "we'll try to prioritize it." When pressed for specifics, people deflect or defer. No one wants to be the person who says, "This isn't realistic given everything else on my plate."
4. Action: Where Intention Meets Reality
What it means: The different actions people need to take—especially new behaviors required by change. This is where the rubber meets the road, where good intentions transform into new patterns or dissolve into old habits.
The missing conversations that signal a breakdown:
"I tried the new process but hit this obstacle..."
"We need different resources than we thought."
"The old way is still faster when we're under pressure."
"Here's what's actually preventing us from changing."
Diagnostic questions: Are we talking about the things that will actually move the needle? Are people comfortable acknowledging when things don't go as planned? Do we have forums for rapid problem-solving?
Red flags: Lots of busy work without real movement toward the change goals. New behaviors last only while being watched, then revert the moment real pressure hits.
5. Results: The Reality Check
What it means: Are people actually moving along the change journey? This includes not just adoption metrics but what adoption means for the business—the real value being created.
The missing conversations that signal a breakdown:
"This isn't creating the value we expected."
"Are we measuring what matters or just what's easy to count?"
"Should we adjust our approach based on what we're learning?"
"How do we know if we're making progress?"
Diagnostic questions: Is there a feedback loop that people actually use? Are people experiencing value from changing? Are we measuring business impact or just compliance?
Red flag: No one's measuring or discussing actual movement along the change journey. Success is defined as "the training is complete" or "the new system is installed," rather than "people are working differently and creating better results."
Where Change Breaks Down in Practice
Let's see how this diagnostic lens reveals breakdown points across common change scenarios:
Digital transformation where everyone's still using Excel. A company invests millions in a new CRM system. Training is comprehensive. The technology is superior. But no one asked if the sales team actually wanted to change what's been working for them. Six months later, the sales team is still tracking everything in their personal spreadsheets.
Breakdown point: Cares
The missing conversation: "What's really in it for the team to change to the new CRM?"
The fix: Sessions exploring how the CRM could eliminate their most hated tasks—like end-of-quarter reporting scrambles
Merger integration where 'us vs. them' persists. Two companies become one on paper. Leadership declares "we're one team now," but never creates forums for real integration. Two years later, people still say "the way we used to do it at Company A" and eye each other suspiciously in meetings.
Breakdown point: Conversations
The missing conversation: "What are we each afraid of losing in this integration?"
The fix: Cross-company pairs tasked with finding what they could create together that neither could do alone
Culture initiative that feels like empty posters. Tag lines show up in slide decks. Town halls are held. This is the third "culture transformation" in five years, each one forgotten within months. No one's asking what will make this time different. Everyone knows it's lipstick on a pig—nothing's really going to change.
Breakdown point: Commitments
The missing conversation: "What specific behaviors will we start or stop doing?"
The fix: Teams defined three concrete actions they'd take in the next 30 days—and what they'd stop doing to make room
Process improvement that creates more bottlenecks. A new review process is rolled out. Everyone commits to following it. But when the team tries to implement it alongside their existing workflows, everything grinds to a halt. What should take hours now takes days.
Breakdown point: Action
The missing conversation: "These new steps are actually slowing us down because..."
The fix: Weekly "friction logs" where people could surface obstacles without judgment—revealing that the review steps duplicated existing quality checks
OKR rollout that's forgotten by Q2. Leadership is excited. Everyone gets trained. But the OKRs are written like to-do lists, not strategic metrics that matter.
Breakdown point: Results
The missing conversation: "Are these OKRs actually measuring what creates value?"
The fix: Quarterly reset asking "What metrics would signal meaningful change for the business?" and then crafting outcome-oriented vs tactical goals
Notice the pattern? The breakdown point tells you exactly which conversations to design. This isn't about adding more process—it's about having the right conversations at the right time.
From Diagnosis to Change Activation
Understanding where your change is breaking down is powerful, but it's only the first step. Here's how to move from diagnosis to activation:
1. Map your initiative against the Architecture of Outcomes. Take your current change effort and assess where energy is strong and where it dissipates. Don't just look at where you've spent time—look at where real alignment and honesty are present and where they're missing.
2. Identify which conversations are missing or hidden. The breakdown point reveals which crucial conversations aren't happening—or are happening in the wrong places (hallways instead of meetings). These are usually the uncomfortable ones that everyone's avoiding.
3. Create conditions for real conversation. Design forums where these specific conversations can happen safely and productively. Not more meetings, but better ones—with clear purpose, psychological safety, and expectation of honest engagement.
4. Design actions based on what emerges. The conversations aren't the end goal—they're how you get to better action. Based on what surfaces in these conversations, design the next steps together. Co-creation is the root of deep buy-in.
Remember: This isn't about adding meetings. It's about better meetings. It means committing to having the conversations that need to happen actually happen, in a way that moves people forward.
The Strategic Operator's Role
If you're responsible for successful change implementation, you have to bridge the big picture and the daily reality. If you're a Chief of Staff or change leader, you're in the meetings where strategy is set and the conversations where people figure out what it actually means.
Your unique value in change activation:
You see patterns across silos that others miss, and team-specific challenges that are obscured in aggregate
You have an imperative to ask the uncomfortable questions
You can create safe spaces for real conversation
You're the connective tissue between strategy and execution
Most importantly, you can spot when the official story ("everything's on track") doesn't match the hallway conversations ("this isn't working"). That gap is where change goes to die—and where your intervention matters most.
Making Change Human Again
Organizational change failure isn't a framework problem—it's a conversation and behavior problem. Systems and processes are only as good as the behaviors and ways of working that surround them.
When good change goes bad, it's rarely because the strategy was wrong or the plan was flawed. It's because somewhere along the way, the human connection got lost. The cascade from caring to results stopped flowing because the conversations that carry it forward went underground, got avoided, or never happened at all.
The Architecture of Outcomes isn't another change management methodology to implement. It's a leadership lens for seeing where change efforts lose their way and what to do about it. Once you can diagnose the breakdown, the path forward becomes clear: facilitate the missing conversations, address the behavioral barriers, and create the conditions for real commitment and action.
Your change initiative doesn't need a better system. It needs the conversations that connect human caring through to business results.
What breakdown points do you recognize in your current change initiatives? Where might the missing conversations be hiding in your organization?
Meta Description: Why do promising change efforts fail? Discover the 5 breakdown points where good change goes wrong and what leaders can do to course correct.