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

Change Starts Here

You don’t have to be in or near the field of change management long before you hear a daunting statistic: 70% of change initiatives fail. It’s mentioned in passing as a fact in most change management books and articles nowadays. Is change management challenging? A few have been utter failures.

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

Harvard Business Review

Most experts, for example, state that 70% of change efforts fail, but a 2011 study in the Journal of Change Management , led by the University of Brighton researcher Mark Hughes found that there is no empirical evidence to support this statistic. The insidious myth that change initiatives usually fail is disturbingly widespread.

Champy 8