Strategy isn't the problem.
Behavior is.
If you've been reading the Behavior Brief for a while, or have worked with 1st90 before, you've heard us say it more than once: most transformations don't fail because the strategy is wrong. They fail because the behaviors never shifted.
This week, BCG's Julia Dhar said it on HBR IdeaCast podcast— out loud, on tape:
"Generally, we are talking about a behavior shift. And we don't ask deeply enough, often enough — is it likely that the people who need to change their behavior are going to do this?"
Dhar leads BCG's Behavioral Science Lab and is the co-author of How Change Really Works. The number she's working with: more than 70% of organizational transformations fall short of their goals. Her diagnosis is the one we keep coming back to here — leaders over-invest in designing change and under-invest in whether the humans on the other end are willing, motivated, and equipped to do it.
Three principles from the episode worth sitting with this week:
Get true agreement, not false alignment. Nodding is not adoption.
Give people agency, not just involvement. "Inclusion" without authorship doesn't move behavior.
Expect take-up to be earned, not automatic. New behavior is a sale, not a memo.
This is the work. It's what we do for our enterprise clients for any new role, any rollout, any restructure is actually about. Strategy gets the slide. Behavior gets the result.
Listen to the episode → The Leadership Skills That Make Transformation Stick — HBR IdeaCast
Until next week,
The 1st90 team
P.S. — Reply and tell us the last transformation you watched die in the gap between "agree" and "act." We read every one.
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