We’ve Heard It Before: 70% of Transformations Fail. But What If the Real Reason Has Been Right in Front of Us?

Did you know that 70% of transformations fail due to… yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ve all heard it before. But here’s the twist: we had the ‘why’ wrong this entire time.

It’s easy to blame communication. Or lack of leadership support. Or even employee resistance. I’ve even heard the term ‘stupid change’...let that sink in.

 The Real Why

It all boils down to one thing. Most transformations don’t collapse because of technology or process gaps. They fail because of an obsession with quantitative data — timelines, budgets, and KPIs while neglecting the qualitative signals: trust, inclusion, and voice.

Resistance gets blamed as the enemy, when in reality it’s just misunderstood. Resistance isn’t sabotage. It's a signal. It’s data in human form.

And here’s the deeper truth: people don’t actually hate change. They hate when change is imposed on them without conversation. They hate being excluded from decisions that reshape their daily work. They hate feeling like their voice doesn’t matter.

The Cost of Getting It Wrong

We’ve heard it before: 70% of transformations fail. But the scale of that failure is staggering.

• Globally, $2.3 trillion has already been wasted on failed digital transformations (EurekAlert, Taylor & Francis, FT).
  
• The average project costs $10.9 million and more than a third of them collapse before delivering value (Process Excellence Network).
  
• Even when projects launch, the cost of burnout, disengagement, and turnover quietly compounds in the background, eating away at whatever gains the technology promised.
  

And the story doesn’t end there. In the first half of 2025 alone, over 20,000 layoffs were linked to automation and AI. Only a handful of those companies dared to name “AI” outright, but the signal is clear: efficiency-first thinking is rewriting work,  often at the expense of the very people expected to carry transformation forward.

So yes, the numbers are alarming. But the real why isn’t in the spreadsheets. It’s in the silence of voices excluded, in the resistance mislabeled as sabotage, and in the cultures amputated for the sake of efficiency.

And recently I posted about a CEO who fired nearly 80% of his workforce for “refusing” to adopt AI. He called it efficiency. It wasn’t resistance. It wasn’t that the people failed, it was that he failed to understand them. And this…erodes trust.

The Real Why Behind the Numbers

If the failure of transformation were just about money, we could fix it with bigger budgets.
If it were just about technology, we could fix it with better tools.
If it were just about resistance, we could fix it with more mandates. Oh wait. We tried that, and it didn’t work either. 

But here’s the deeper truth: the real disconnect isn’t just in budgets, tools, or mandates.
It’s in leadership itself.

For decades, leadership has been defined by control, command, and compliance. But how can we watch technology evolve at breakneck speed, watch new generations rise with new expectations — and not evolve our leadership approach to match?

The old style of leadership sees people as obstacles to efficiency. The new world demands leaders who see people as the very engine of transformation.

Because the future isn’t asking for leaders who are faster, it’s asking for leaders who are braver and just more human.

Bottom Line

Transformation isn’t failing because of technology.
It isn’t failing because of budgets.
And it isn’t failing because people “don’t like change”… or stupid change. 😉

It’s failing because too often, we’ve been trying to build the future with outdated leadership and with systems built around people, not for people.

And if the old playbooks can’t carry us forward, then it’s time for something new.

Introducing The DIG Framework

At Human Centered Agility, we believe the answer isn’t another checklist, another tool, or another mandate.
It’s a system, one designed to prepare people before change begins, sustain them as change unfolds, and grow transformation by bridging the gap between people and operational excellence. 

If old playbooks can’t carry us forward, what will? At Human Centered Agility, we believe the answer isn’t another checklist, another tool, or another mandate. It’s a system, one designed to prepare people before change begins, sustain them as change unfolds, and grow transformation by bridging the gap between people and operational excellence. DIG isn’t about forcing change on people. It’s about readying them.

It isn’t about squeezing more out of teams. It’s about sustaining them. And it isn’t about one-and-done launches. It’s about growing transformation over time. DIG is how we stop wasting billions on failed change. DIG is how we move past “stupid change” and start building smart, human-centered transformation. DIG is how we evolve leadership for a world that refuses to stand still.

You can’t scale without a soul.
You can’t code trust.
And you can’t build the future with systems that work around people instead of for them.

That’s why we DIG.

The future belongs to leaders who Discover, Integrate, and Grow.

Are you ready to DIG?
👉 HumanCenteredAgility.com/DIG