New structures, old habits: Why change doesn’t stick and what we can do about it

Organizations invest enormous energy in planning change — new roles, restructured teams, governance redesigns, updated processes, strategic plans. And when those changes don’t produce the outcomes they were designed for, the instinct is usually to question the design (did we get this “right”?) or to look at the people who “aren’t getting on board”. But there’s a third explanation that’s almost always part of what’s at play: the behavioral, relational, and cultural work required to make the new structure actually function was never planned for or resourced. Structure creates the conditions for change, but it can’t produce change on its own.

In this session, we’ll explore why organizational changes so often fail to deliver on their promise — not because the design was wrong, but because the work of helping people actually operate differently within a new structure is its own work that so many change processes skip. We’ll look at what that work involves, where it tends to break down, and what you can do as a leader to close the gap between the organization you envisioned and the one you’re actually living in.