When transformation becomes a source of fragility
Transformation today occupies a central place among the concerns of organizations. Technological advances, changing markets, employee expectations and new economic realities are pushing leaders to rethink their strategies, their structures and their ways of working. The capacity to adapt has become an important condition of competitiveness and, in some contexts, of survival.
This need to evolve, however, comes with growing pressure. Organizations must improve their efficiency while innovating, maintain their results while developing new capabilities, and respond to immediate demands without compromising their future. Transformations then multiply, each one carried by objectives that may be perfectly legitimate when examined individually.
A technology rollout promises to improve productivity. A restructuring aims to clarify responsibilities. A new management approach seeks to strengthen autonomy. A leadership development program is meant to support growth. The expected benefits are generally well defined, the investments are approved and the timelines are set.
Yet when these initiatives meet in the daily life of teams, their reality becomes much more complex than the one presented in project plans.
Managers must keep delivering results while guiding their employees through new expectations. Teams must learn, adjust their practices, preserve their coordination and maintain the quality of their work. Transformations that are officially separate often draw on the same people, the same resources and the same capacities for learning.
This accumulation can create a fundamental contradiction: in seeking to strengthen their capacity to evolve, some organizations end up weakening the human and organizational conditions on which their success depends.
The paradox does not lie in transformation itself. Organizations must evolve, sometimes quickly, and some decisions cannot be postponed without significant consequences. It appears rather when the capacity to launch initiatives grows faster than the collective capacity to understand them, integrate them and sustain them over time.
We devote a great deal of attention to preparing and deploying transformations. We assess the resources required, the operational risks, the timelines and the expected results. We seek to gain the support of the people concerned and to facilitate the adoption of new practices.
But one question often remains insufficiently explored: what conditions will allow these transformations to keep producing their effects once the project is officially over?
This question obliges us to look at change beyond its implementation. It leads us to consider transformation as a process of collective development whose success depends as much on the lasting integration of new practices as on the quality of their initial design.
The available capacity is not always what we think
When an organization decides to undertake a transformation, it generally assesses its capacity to carry it out on the basis of relatively visible resources. It examines budgets, technical skills, team availability and the demands of the schedule. These elements are indispensable to rigorous planning, but they do not always make it possible to appreciate the full extent of the human effort the change will require.
An organization may have the financial resources needed to implement a new system without having truly planned for the time employees will need to change their work habits. It may rely on an experienced management team to lead a restructuring while underestimating the effort needed to rebuild coordination mechanisms. It may also plan several development programs on the assumption that what is learned will naturally transfer into daily practice.
In each of these examples, the resources needed for deployment may seem available. The capacity for integration nonetheless remains uncertain.
This distinction is especially important because the work of integration often shows up outside the activities officially associated with the project. Understanding a new procedure, adjusting a decision, resolving an unforeseen difficulty or coordinating a newly shared responsibility takes time and attention. These efforts are layered on top of usual responsibilities and can continue long after the deployment schedule has ended.
Human capacity therefore cannot be assessed solely on the basis of the number of hours available or the number of people assigned to an initiative. It also depends on the complexity of the learning expected, the interdependencies between teams and the real possibility of consolidating new practices.
A transformation can be technically feasible and humanly difficult to absorb under the planned conditions.
This reality becomes even more important when several changes are under way at the same time. Each project has its own demands, but the people who must integrate them work in a shared environment. The same managers may be called on to guide a new structure, support the adoption of a technology tool and change their leadership practices, all while maintaining the results expected of their team.
The organization may then overestimate its available capacity because it examines separately initiatives that, in reality, draw on interdependent resources.
Transformation thus requires a more global reading of organizational capacity. It asks us to consider what people must learn, what they must continue to accomplish and the conditions under which these two demands can coexist.
The accumulation of changes transforms the experience of work
Organizational transformations are usually structured around separate projects. This approach facilitates planning, governance and the tracking of results. It can, however, create a fragmented representation of the experience lived by employees.
For a person who must deal with several changes, the boundaries between projects are rarely as clear as in planning documents. A new platform changes the way requests are handled, a reorganization transforms responsibilities and new indicators influence priorities. These changes show up in the same interactions, the same decisions and the same working days.
Their accumulation therefore does not simply amount to an addition of tasks. It can change the conditions under which people carry out their responsibilities.
When an employee learns a new way of working, they sometimes have to devote more attention to activities that were previously relatively automatic. The reference points that made them efficient become less reliable, some decisions require more thought and interactions with colleagues have to be adjusted.
These efforts are part of the normal learning process. They can become more demanding when people must simultaneously integrate several changes that draw on the same resources.
A new procedure may be relatively simple to understand when it is the main change made to the work. It can become much harder to master when it comes on top of a transformation of responsibilities, a change of manager and an increase in performance expectations.
This reality invites us to move beyond a reading of change based solely on the number of initiatives under way. Their nature, their simultaneity, their interdependencies and the conditions under which they are introduced also influence their integration.
Two organizations can undertake a comparable number of transformations and have very different experiences. One may have solid coordination mechanisms, clear responsibilities and sufficient resources to support learning. The other may multiply initiatives in an environment already marked by conflicting priorities and difficulties in collaboration.
The quantity of change, on its own, is therefore not enough to assess an organization’s capacity to integrate it.
It becomes necessary to examine the way these transformations interact with the real functioning of the organization and with the human capabilities they draw on.
When change fatigue reveals something other than resistance
The difficulties encountered during a transformation are frequently interpreted through the notion of resistance to change. Employees may express concerns, question certain decisions or hesitate to adopt new practices. Managers then try to understand these reactions and to encourage buy-in.
This approach remains relevant, but it carries a risk when all difficulties are grouped under a single explanation.
A person may indeed feel uncertain when facing a new responsibility, or prefer a way of working they have mastered for a long time. They may also fully recognize the relevance of a transformation while no longer having the resources needed to integrate one more demand.
These situations can produce similar behaviors, but they call for different responses.
In the first case, a better understanding of the objectives, opportunities to participate or suitable support can help facilitate adoption. In the second, the difficulties may be linked to workload, to the simultaneity of initiatives or to the absence of sufficient conditions for learning.
More frequent communication will not necessarily make up for a lack of time. An inspiring speech will not resolve conflicting priorities. Additional training could even increase the pressure if it is added to responsibilities that are already hard to reconcile.
Change fatigue therefore deserves to be examined as a possible signal of the limits of the organizational environment.
It may reveal that the demands of transformation temporarily exceed the capacities available to integrate them. It may also reflect a lack of trust, disappointing past experiences or legitimate concerns about the consequences of the change.
The discernment of leadership consists in recognizing these different realities before determining the appropriate response.
When an organization systematically attributes adoption difficulties to employees’ attitudes, it risks overlooking the conditions it helps create itself. It may then ask for more commitment and adaptation without examining whether the necessary means are really available.
The capacity for transformation rests on a shared responsibility. People have a role to play in their own learning and adaptation, while the organization must consider the conditions under which it asks them to evolve.
This distinction becomes especially important for managers, who often find themselves at the point where these responsibilities meet.
Managers at the heart of organizational contradictions
Managers hold a decisive position in transformations. They translate strategic directions into concrete expectations, support their teams through uncertainty and help evolve daily practices. Their role requires an understanding of the objectives being pursued, an ability to communicate clearly and enough latitude to adapt their interventions to the realities on the ground.
When several transformations overlap, this responsibility can become particularly complex.
A manager may be called on to rally their team around a new priority while a previous initiative has not yet stabilized. They may have to explain decisions whose implications remain partly uncertain, or support the adoption of practices they are themselves still learning to master.
They may also be held accountable for results over which they have limited room to maneuver.
These contradictions directly influence their capacity to exercise leadership. Constantly fragmented attention can reduce their availability to support employees. Priorities that have not been sufficiently settled can make it harder to clarify expectations. A lack of support or information can weaken their capacity to maintain their team’s trust.
In these circumstances, it would be reductive to conclude that the difficulties observed result solely from a lack of change management skills.
Leadership development remains essential, but individual capabilities cannot indefinitely compensate for organizational inconsistencies.
A company can train its managers to delegate better while maintaining highly centralized decision-making mechanisms. It can ask them to foster autonomy while requiring constant approvals. It can promote collaboration while its performance indicators mainly reward the achievement of individual objectives.
These contradictions influence the behaviors that will actually be adopted.
They also reveal that the success of a transformation depends on decisions that go beyond the immediate responsibilities of managers.
Change leadership must therefore be considered at several levels. Executives set the directions and settle priorities. Those responsible for transformations coordinate the initiatives and their interdependencies. Managers support their translation into daily practice, while teams contribute to their integration through their knowledge and experience.
Coherence among these responsibilities is an important condition of the collective capacity to evolve.
Implementation is not the end of transformation
Organizations frequently evaluate their transformations using indicators associated with their completion. A system has been implemented, a structure has been deployed, a training has been completed or a process has been revised. These results make it possible to track the progress of initiatives and to verify that the planned commitments have been met.
They do not, however, necessarily show that the expected changes have taken hold in daily functioning.
A new platform can be operational without being fully used. A structure can be officially in place while decisions continue to follow the old informal channels. A training can have led to the acquisition of knowledge without that knowledge being put to use in a lasting way.
In these situations, the transformation may be considered finished administratively while its integration remains incomplete.
This distinction leads us to examine three realities that are often confused: the completion of the change, its initial adoption and its maintenance over time.
Completion corresponds to putting in place the new conditions that were planned. Initial adoption shows when people begin to use the new practices. Their maintenance assumes that these practices can continue to be drawn on in varied situations, beyond the period during which they receive particular attention.
These three dimensions are linked, but they do not necessarily progress at the same time.
An organization can succeed in its deployment and observe encouraging adoption in the first weeks. Employees understand the new expectations, managers actively support the desired behaviors and the first results seem to confirm the relevance of the decisions made.
Then, gradually, some practices begin to erode.
Old reflexes reappear. Decisions return to their usual channels. Newly implemented tools are used unevenly. Managers go back to ways of doing things they know better, particularly when operational pressure increases.
The transformation officially remains in place, but its effects on the real functioning of the organization become less evident.
This phenomenon deserves particular attention because it can be interpreted as a simple lack of discipline or commitment.
It sometimes reveals a deeper reality: the new behaviors were introduced without the conditions needed to sustain them having been sufficiently developed.
A transformation can thus produce visible results in the short term without becoming a lasting capability of the organization.
Why do old habits take back their place?
Habits play an important role in the way we act. They allow us to carry out certain activities with reduced use of conscious attention, particularly when situations and reference points remain relatively stable.
This function contributes to our daily efficiency. It can also influence the way we integrate new practices.
When a transformation requires changing well-established behaviors, people sometimes have to devote more attention to decisions or actions that were previously relatively automatic.
Repetition can gradually facilitate the adoption of new behaviors, but this process varies according to the person, the complexity of the actions and the contexts in which they are carried out.
The work of Phillippa Lally and her colleagues, published in 2010 in the European Journal of Social Psychology, examined in particular the development of automaticity in behaviors repeated in daily life. It shows that this process evolves over time and presents considerable variability.
These results concern individual behaviors studied in specific contexts. They do not make it possible to determine a universal period after which an organizational transformation would become lasting.
They nonetheless offer a useful insight: the initial adoption of a behavior and its integration into habits are not the same phenomenon.
In an organization, this distinction takes on an additional dimension.
Professional behaviors are influenced by the relationships, responsibilities, decision-making mechanisms and expectations that structure the work.
A new delegation practice can be taught and applied for several weeks. If managers continue to be evaluated mainly on their direct control of decisions, the old habits are likely to take back their place.
A collaboration method can be welcomed favorably. If objectives remain contradictory between teams, sustaining it can become difficult.
A technology transformation can be deployed successfully. If the old tools and parallel processes continue to be used without clarification, practices can gradually fragment.
These examples reveal that sustaining a change also depends on the coherence between the new behaviors expected and the organizational conditions that surround them.
When a system continues to favor the old practices, those practices can remain easier to draw on, even after an officially successful transformation.
The durability of change therefore requires attention to individual habits and to the collective mechanisms that support them.
It becomes necessary to ask whether the new practices are simply known, whether they are actually used and whether the work environment allows them to be sustained once the usual demands have fully taken back their place.
Durability is not measured two weeks after deployment
Evaluations carried out immediately after a transformation have real value. They make it possible to identify initial difficulties, to verify understanding of the new expectations and to spot certain necessary adjustments.
Their scope nonetheless remains limited when it comes to appreciating the durability of the change.
An evaluation carried out two weeks after implementation can show that people are using the new tools or applying the new procedures. It generally does not make it possible to determine whether these practices will be maintained several months later, once the initial attention has shifted to other priorities.
This distinction connects with research on the transfer of learning.
In their article published in 1988 in Personnel Psychology, Timothy Baldwin and Kevin Ford offer an analysis of the factors that influence the transfer of training. They distinguish in particular between the learning achieved during training and its generalization and maintenance in the workplace.
Their framework underlines the importance of the characteristics of participants, the design of the training and the work environment.
This perspective remains relevant for organizational transformations that rest on the development of new skills or new behaviors.
It reminds us that learning can be real without being applied in a lasting way.
The durability of a transformation therefore benefits from being examined at different moments.
The initial evaluation makes it possible to understand the conditions of adoption. A later observation can reveal the way practices stabilize or meet new difficulties. Longer-term follow-up makes it possible to examine whether the behaviors continue to be drawn on and whether they actually contribute to the results sought.
There is no universal schedule that would suit every transformation. The frequency of evaluations must take into account the nature of the change, the associated risks and the time needed to observe its effects.
A technology transformation, a cultural evolution and a change in leadership practices do not necessarily produce their results at the same pace.
The choice of indicators must also reflect this diversity.
Measuring the number of people trained can be relevant for tracking deployment. Observing the actual use of the new practices makes it possible to appreciate their adoption. Examining operational results and how they evolve over time helps to understand whether the transformation contributes to the expected benefits.
These measures answer different questions.
Confusing them can lead an organization to declare a transformation successful when it does not yet have the information needed to appreciate its durability.
The return on a transformation also depends on what remains
Organizational transformations sometimes involve considerable investments. They require financial resources, management time, learning efforts and, in some cases, a significant reorganization of work.
These investments are generally justified by expected benefits: improved productivity, fewer errors, a better customer experience, greater autonomy or an increased capacity for collaboration.
The realization of these benefits, however, depends on the way the new practices are integrated and maintained.
Imagine an organization that invests in developing the autonomy of its managers. The participants complete their training, begin to delegate more and observe improvements in their teams’ decision-making.
The first results are encouraging.
A few months later, operational pressure increases. Some managers start centralizing decisions again to save time or reduce perceived risks. Employees gradually go back to the habit of asking for approvals.
The knowledge acquired has not necessarily disappeared. The behaviors that were meant to make full use of it are, however, less present.
The organization may then find that some expected benefits diminish or are slow to materialize.
This situation has significant economic implications.
The return on a transformation does not depend solely on its cost of completion or the quality of its deployment. It also depends on the benefits actually obtained and on how well they are maintained over time.
A return to old practices does not automatically lead to a measurable financial loss. Its consequences vary according to the nature of the change, the investments made and the results sought.
It can nonetheless reduce the value created by the transformation, particularly when the expected benefits rest on the continued use of new practices.
This reality should influence the way organizations design their investments.
The resources devoted to consolidating, monitoring and adjusting practices can help protect the benefits sought. Their relevance should be assessed according to the real needs of the transformation, rather than treated as an incidental expense once deployment is over.
Durability thus becomes a dimension of value management.
It invites us to examine what the organization has succeeded in putting in place, but also what it has actually succeeded in transforming in the way it functions.
Who remains responsible when the project is over?
During the deployment of a transformation, responsibilities are generally identified. A sponsor supports the initiative, a team coordinates the activities and managers support the changes in their areas.
Project governance makes it possible to track timelines, risks and expected results.
When the project is officially over, this structure may be dissolved or redirected toward new priorities.
The responsibilities associated with sustaining the practices then sometimes become less explicit.
Managers return to their usual activities. Transformation teams move on to other mandates. Project indicators stop being tracked as often.
Yet the new practices may still require adjustments, support and opportunities for learning.
This period is an important moment in the transformation.
If no clear responsibility is established to ensure the consolidation of practices, sustaining them risks depending mainly on the individual commitment of the people concerned.
Some teams will continue to apply the new ways of doing things. Others could gradually return to their previous habits, particularly when operational constraints increase.
Organizational coherence can then weaken.
Responsibility for durability does not mean that a manager or a team must indefinitely monitor every behavior. It assumes rather that the new practices are gradually integrated into the usual operating mechanisms.
Responsibilities must be clear, relevant indicators must continue to be observed and emerging difficulties must be able to be addressed.
Managers must have the means needed to support the expected practices, while executives must maintain coherence between strategic directions and operational conditions.
This responsibility deserves to be planned from the design of the transformation.
An organization that waits for the project to close before determining how the new practices will be sustained risks discovering too late that the necessary mechanisms were never established.
Durability is therefore not solely a matter of follow-up.
It is a governance responsibility that runs through the entire transformation process.
Absorptive capacity as a strategic issue
The difficulties of integrating and sustaining change bring us back to a broader question: how does an organization develop its capacity to evolve continuously?
In the fifth essay of this collection, we explored the ecosystem of human capabilities. We proposed considering individual capabilities, relationships, structures and learning as interdependent dimensions of organizational development.
This perspective becomes particularly relevant when organizations undertake successive transformations.
Each change draws on knowledge, skills and coordination mechanisms. It can help develop new capabilities, but it can also draw heavily on those that already exist.
The work of Wesley Cohen and Daniel Levinthal on absorptive capacity offers a useful insight for this reflection.
In their article published in 1990 in Administrative Science Quarterly, the authors define an organization’s absorptive capacity through its ability to recognize the value of new external information, assimilate it and apply it.
This concept is mainly concerned with learning and the use of knowledge. It is not a direct measure of the amount of change an organization can withstand.
It nonetheless helps us understand that the integration of new knowledge depends in part on the capabilities and learning already present.
In the context of organizational transformations, this perspective invites us to examine the capacity for integration as a strategic resource.
An organization that develops its learning mechanisms, encourages the flow of knowledge and maintains conditions for collaboration can strengthen its capacity to integrate new practices.
Conversely, an organization that multiplies changes without allowing learning to consolidate risks creating difficulties that will carry over into subsequent transformations.
An incompletely integrated initiative can become an additional constraint for the next one. Employees must then deal with practices that are still unstable while they learn new ways of working.
The capacity to evolve thus depends on the way previous transformations have contributed, or not, to the development of collective capabilities.
This reality gives durability a particular significance.
Sustaining a transformation is not only about preserving the results of a project. It can also help strengthen the organizational resources that will make it possible to take on future changes.
Transforming with discernment
An organization’s capacity to evolve depends in part on how quickly it adapts. In some contexts, postponing a transformation can expose the company to significant risks. Technological, regulatory or competitive changes can require quick decisions and significant adjustments.
Speed is therefore a real dimension of strategy.
It must, however, be considered in relation to the conditions needed to integrate and sustain changes.
A rapid transformation can be relevant when priorities are clear, resources sufficient and support mechanisms suitable. It can become harder to sustain when its pace compromises learning or when several initiatives draw on the same capabilities at the same time.
Strategic discernment consists in recognizing this difference.
It asks us to examine the expected benefits of a transformation while considering the efforts needed to achieve them in a lasting way. It also means taking into account the changes already under way and the learning that still needs to be consolidated.
This reflection can lead to sequencing certain initiatives, simplifying processes or revisiting priorities. It can also confirm the need to accelerate when a situation calls for it.
What matters most is the quality of the trade-offs.
When an organization adds a new priority, it must consider the resources it will draw on and the other commitments that could be affected. Without this attention, accumulation can become the unintended consequence of decisions that are nonetheless coherent when examined separately.
Transformation thus requires a governance able to consider the interdependencies between projects, people and organizational capabilities.
It also requires recognizing that the success of a change cannot be fully evaluated at the moment its deployment ends.
The capacity for transformation also reveals itself in what the organization manages to sustain, to learn and to develop through the initiatives it undertakes.
Conclusion — What transformation leaves behind
Organizations will continue to transform. Economic, technological and social realities will make certain evolutions necessary, sometimes urgent. The capacity to adapt will remain an important dimension of their durability.
This necessity does not mean, however, that every transformation can be undertaken simultaneously, nor that multiplying them automatically strengthens the collective capacity to evolve.
An organization can launch more initiatives without proportionally developing the human capabilities needed to integrate them. It can meet its timelines without having consolidated the new practices. It can also observe encouraging initial adoption without yet having the conditions needed to sustain the changes over time.
These distinctions change our understanding of success.
Carrying out a transformation, integrating it and ensuring its durability are three related but different accomplishments.
The first concerns putting new conditions in place. The second rests on the capacity of people and teams to change their practices. The third depends on the way these practices become integrated enough into the functioning of the organization to keep producing their effects.
The responsibility of leaders therefore extends beyond launch decisions and deployment results.
It includes the capacity to recognize the human resources needed for integration, to settle priorities and to create the conditions in which the new practices can be sustained.
This responsibility has strategic and economic significance.
Transformations are investments whose value depends in part on the benefits they make it possible to achieve over time. When new practices erode, part of that value can weaken as well.
Durability thus deserves attention comparable to that given to the design and implementation of initiatives.
It obliges us to examine what remains when the initial attention shifts, when project teams move on to other mandates and when the usual demands take back their place.
A lasting transformation leaves more than a new process, a tool or a structure.
It changes the capabilities the organization can actually draw on.
It enriches the ways of understanding, deciding, collaborating and contributing. It allows learning to go beyond the people who first developed it and become a collective resource.
It is in this continuity that transformation acquires its organizational significance.
The fundamental question then becomes the capacity to make the changes undertaken last without compromising the human resources that make them possible.
For the success of a transformation is not revealed only in what changes at the moment of its deployment. It is also measured by what continues to evolve once the project is over.
Scientific references
Baldwin, T. T., & Ford, J. K. (1988). Transfer of Training: A Review and Directions for Future Research. Personnel Psychology, 41(1), 63–105.
Cohen, W. M., & Levinthal, D. A. (1990). Absorptive Capacity: A New Perspective on Learning and Innovation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 35(1), 128–152.
Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C. H. M., Potts, H. W. W., & Wardle, J. (2010). How Are Habits Formed: Modelling Habit Formation in the Real World. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998–1009.
Argyris, C., & Schön, D. A. (1978). Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective. Addison-Wesley.
Deci, E. L., Olafsen, A. H., & Ryan, R. M. (2017). Self-Determination Theory in Work Organizations: The State of a Science. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 4, 19–43.
Armenakis, A. A., & Bedeian, A. G. (1999). Organizational Change: A Review of Theory and Research in the 1990s. Journal of Management, 25(3), 293–315.
A C+ reading — Transformation as the development of lasting capabilities
The C+™ methodology offers a reading of human and organizational development through six interdependent dimensions:
Awareness · Understanding · Choice · Capability · Connection · Contribution
- In the context of transformation, awareness makes it possible to recognize the human and organizational realities that influence change, including habits, constraints and available capacities.
- Understanding enriches the reading of the interdependencies between initiatives, responsibilities and the conditions needed to integrate them.
- Choice engages strategic discernment, the clarification of priorities and the trade-offs that will make it possible to support the transformations undertaken.
- Capability concerns the resources and learning needed to translate intentions into new practices.
- Connection supports the relationships, coordination and collaboration mechanisms that allow people to integrate changes together.
- Contribution represents the lasting putting into action of these capabilities in the service of results that go beyond individual efforts.
These dimensions interact continuously. A difficulty with integration can reveal a need for understanding. A new practice can transform relationships. A contribution can bring to light a collective capability that had not yet been recognized.
The C+™ perspective thus invites us to consider transformation as a process of development whose success depends on the coherence between strategic ambitions, human capabilities and organizational conditions.
It leads us to examine three complementary questions:
- What do we want to transform?
- What capabilities must we develop to get there?
- What conditions will allow these capabilities and the new practices to be sustained over time?
The research presented in this essay sheds light on certain mechanisms associated with learning, habits and the integration of change. It does not constitute a scientific validation of the C+™ methodology as a whole.
Next dossier — Solving the wrong problem: when organizations invest in solutions before understanding what really needs to change.