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It’s Time to Abolish the 70% Change Failure Rate Statistic

Change Starts Here

He also found in the same set of research that only 10% of executives said their change programs were completely/mostly unsuccessful. And notice the number is based on the opinion of executives, and not an actual study tracking projects over time to see if they actually achieved their goals.

Kotter 143
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Stop Using the Excuse “Organizational Change Is Hard”

Harvard Business Review

Hughes traces the mythical 70% failure rate back to the 1993 book Reengineering the Corporation , in which authors Michael Hammer and James Champy stated: “our unscientific estimate is that as many as 50 percent to 70 percent of the organizations that undertake a reengineering effort do not achieve the dramatic results they intended.”

Champy 8