Meaningful Change Consulting

06/05/2026

Performative adoption is one of the most expensive patterns in organizational change.

Gartner named the underlying behavior in its 2026 change management trend report: performative participation. Employees engaging with change initiatives not because they've adopted them, but because visible participation creates access to opportunity.

The metrics look fine. Training completion is high. Leadership reports strong buy-in. Meanwhile, actual behavior hasn't shifted.

The pattern is costly because it's invisible until the business outcome fails to materialize. By then, the project is closed and the team has moved on.

Change Rescue™ was built for exactly this situation, when an initiative looks on track but adoption is shallow, and the gap between reported progress and real organizational behavior is widening.

Here's the signal worth watching: when change metrics are strong and outcomes are still disappointing, the gap is rarely about ex*****on. It's a design problem upstream.

Where have you seen performative adoption show up in a transformation?



Source: Gartner, 'Top Change Management Trends for CHROs in the Age of AI,' March 2026 (based on December 2025 survey of 110 CHROs)

06/03/2026

New piece in Forbes today.

The most expensive misalignment on your executive team is the one that looks like agreement.

When teams are clearly misaligned, the signs are visible. Disagreement surfaces. Tensions get debated. Uncomfortable, but actionable.

Almost alignment works differently. Quiet. Functional on the surface. Expensive in ex*****on. The team leaves the strategy meeting with nodding heads and a clear plan. Three weeks later, four leaders are running four versions of the same decision.

The piece walks through:

→ The difference between agreement and alignment — and why most executive teams pursue the wrong one → The four layers where alignment has to hold simultaneously → The diagnostic question I now use with every executive team I work with

Building on April's piece. That one was about direction vs alignment. This one is about agreement vs alignment. The second confusion is more expensive than the first.

📖 https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesbusinesscouncil/2026/06/03/a-change-initiative-can-be-in-motion-but-it-doesnt-indicate-progress/

There’s a difference between activity and traction. For an organization’s change initiative to succeed, there needs to be traction, not just activity.

06/01/2026

A December 2025 Gartner survey of 110 CHROs found 78% agree workflows and roles must change to get real value from AI investments.

That's an unusually high level of consensus.

It also raises a harder question: agreeing that something needs to change is not the same as being equipped to lead it.

Most organizations have the ambition, the technology, and the budget. What they're missing is the change capability to translate strategy into adoption, the kind that holds after go-live, when the project team has moved on.

Strategic Tension™ creates the conditions for people to move. Layered Alignment™ ensures every layer of leadership can make the change make sense for the teams below them. Workflow redesign without both becomes another initiative that launched but never landed.

Capability is what closes the gap. Intent never has.

What's getting in the way of capability in your AI implementation work?



Source: Gartner, December 2025 survey of 110 CHROs

05/29/2026

Three things May confirmed about the work ahead:

The organizations navigating complexity well are the most aligned, not the fastest.

Speed without alignment produces friction. Ambition without capacity produces fatigue. Change without design produces the kind of resistance that shows up in adoption data months after the project has closed and the team has moved on.

The bridge across all three gaps is organizational design, not urgency, not communication tactics, not stronger executive sponsorship in isolation. Design is what makes the other three durable.

June marks the final stretch of Q2. If your strategy needs the organization to show up differently in the second half of the year, the design work starts now. By Q3, the runway is shorter than it looks.

What is May teaching you about the pace your organization can actually sustain?

05/27/2026

May is Mental Health Awareness Month.

Here's a pattern we see consistently in organizations navigating sustained transformation: the most exhausted leaders aren't the ones working hardest. They're the ones working in systems that were never designed to support what they're being asked to do.

A 2025 Eagle Hill survey found 63% of U.S. employees experienced workplace change over the past year. Only 25% believe their organization manages it well.

That gap is a design problem before it's a wellness problem.

When organizations layer change without building alignment, broadcast instead of listening, and expect leaders to champion initiatives they were never prepared to lead, the fatigue that follows is the predictable output of a flawed system. Calling it burnout names the symptom. The cause is upstream.

Reinvention Capability includes protecting the capacity of the people doing the work, not just measuring the speed of ex*****on.

What design shift would most relieve the pressure your leaders are carrying right now?



Source: Eagle Hill Consulting, 2025

05/25/2026

Memorial Day.

Today we honor the men and women who gave their lives in service to this country, and the families who carry the fullest weight of that loss.

There is nothing to add to that.

Thank you.

05/22/2026

Two patterns we're seeing in the field right now.

One organization moved its operating structure ahead of the team's capability to lead inside it. The new design is sound. The talent inside it isn't yet equipped to operate at the level the structure assumes.

A second is up-leveling a key function from operational delivery to strategic enterprise work. Capacity gaps were known going in. They were not addressed before the redesign launched.

Different organizations. Different functions. Same pattern: growth committed before readiness was built.

The strategy questions that get skipped are rarely about ambition or timing. They're whether the organization, as it stands today, has the capacity, capability, and alignment to absorb the move without fracturing.

In her latest article, Leslie explores what this pattern costs, why it keeps happening, and the three signals worth watching before your next major move.

📖 https://www.meaningfulchangeconsulting.com/growth-before-readiness-the-strategy-question-most-executives-skip

What readiness question have you learned to ask before committing to a major structural move?

The most expensive transformation failures don't announce themselves at launch. They show up in the months after — when the new structure isn't producing, the change isn't landing, and the strategy that looked right on paper isn't translating in practice.

05/20/2026

63% of U.S. employees experienced workplace change last year.

Only 25% believe their organization manages it well.

Better tactics don't close that gap. Better design does.

Five reasons change communication loses trust, and what actually closes the gap.

Which one shows up most in your organization?



Source: Eagle Hill Consulting, 2025

05/19/2026

The lifecycle for reinvention is getting shorter.

For individuals, teams, and organizations alike, the pace of disruption keeps accelerating, and the old model of change, respond, stabilize, move on, no longer reflects reality.

Reinvention is no longer something organizations do occasionally in response to disruption. It’s a leadership discipline that has to be built continuously.

The organizations that adapt most effectively won’t be the ones reacting faster to every shift. They’ll be the ones that have developed the capability to evolve as conditions change.

🎧 Clip featuring Leslie Ellis from Management Muse Episode #103: Why Your Change Efforts Keep Failing (And What to Do Instead)
Full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4ZZNBntXGE

05/18/2026

Compression.

That's the word I keep returning to when I look at what organizations are navigating right now. Not disruption. Not transformation. Compression.

More change, absorbed faster, with fewer layers and less margin for error. Accenture's Pulse of Change Index shows a 183% increase in the rate of change since 2019, and that number is still climbing.

Speed is part of the story. Depth is the rest. Strategy cycles that once took quarters now take weeks. Decisions that once had time for alignment get made before alignment is possible.

The leaders navigating this well aren't just moving faster. They're building the organizational muscle to absorb speed without fracturing alignment. That's Reinvention Capability, not surviving the current wave, but building the capacity to meet whatever comes next.

The question for this week: Is your organization designed for the pace it's actually operating at?

💬 What's the biggest compression point in your work right now?



Source: Accenture Pulse of Change Index