The organizations that struggle most through change under-planned it, and under-engaged the people living through it.
Not the ones with the boldest strategy, the biggest budget, or the toughest market. The ones that treated planning and people as two separate problems.
By Maëlle Costa · 7 August 2026
The organizations that struggle most through change are usually the ones that under-planned it, and under-engaged the people living through it.
Not the ones with the boldest strategy. Not the ones with the biggest budget. Not even the ones facing the toughest market conditions.
Under-planned looks like a timeline built backward from an announcement date, not forward from what the organization can actually absorb.
Under-engaged looks like a rollout people hear about instead of one they helped shape, so they comply on the surface and quietly resist everywhere else.
Here’s the thing: you can survive a bad plan with a team that’s genuinely bought in. You rarely survive a good plan with a team that never was.
Leadership tends to over-invest in the first and skip the second, because the plan is visible and the buy-in isn’t.