The evidence is overwhelming. Large-scale change programs designed to produce quantum changes in a quantum way have a very poor success rate. For example, recent surveys on the success of Total Quality Management programs show that over 70% have failed or delivered disappointing results. Data on reengineering initiatives is pointing to a similar conclusion. Fads and fashions come and go and company-wide transformation projects, with minor exceptions, attract consistent criticism. Michael Beer and his colleagues captured the problem in the title of their 1989 HBR article on "Why Change Programs Don't Produce Change," and the same theme is echoed yet again in John Kotter's 1995 article on "Why Transformation Efforts Fail." [1]

Yet the reason for these problems is obvious when you look at the evidence on the structure of influence and control. Research suggests that any person in any organizational role typically has very limited influence over the process, perhaps no more than 15%. The other 85% rests in the broader context and is beyond direct influence. The implication: effective change occurs when people, individually and collectively, target and lever their "15%"; attempts to change situations in an unfocused "100% way" are doomed to fail.

SIDEBAR: Widespread Support for the 15% Principle

Our interventions and research suggest that successful leaders and managers understand and practice this principle. But formal theories of leadership and management tend to push them in the opposite direction by emphasizing the importance of programmatic change. Indeed, these theories and programs actually prevent effective change from occurring because they diffuse energy and attention into the program itself rather than towards the high leverage initiatives that are needed to make it a success.

To test this idea for yourself look at the way your organization is approaching the challenge of managing change:

Are you being swamped by programs and processes that generate enormous amounts of activity with little bite?

Is the planning process focussing on the production of documents and "PLANS" rather than generating and discovering key initiatives that will make a real difference?

Is your corporate vision alive or dead? Dead ones look great on paper but are bogged down by "100% aspirations" rather than serving as action-generating frames that can unleash significant change.

Are your reengineering projects being stalemated by consultations, meetings, programs and plans that merely end up giving shape to the latent resistance within the organization - the "global 85%" that doesn't want to move? Or are they evolving in a more open-ended way by targeting the breakthrough initiatives that can seed genuine change?

Successful corporate transformation requires the mastery of what we call the art of "high leverage 15% change" and avoid the stalemating, diffusion of energy and "make work" that accompanies so many contemporary change efforts. This is the message of our opening case study. Though conducted under the guise of a broad restructuring initiative, it was successful because the people involved used the right levers at the right time to create new contexts in which successful initiatives could evolve.

The art of using highly levered "15% initiatives" to create contexts that facilitate and encourage change is a fundamental competence for management in turbulent times. The 15% principle has revolutionary significance, because it forces leaders and managers to completely rethink their role and influence. As one executive put it, "It puts the management of change in completely new perspective. Instead of trying to create 100% change in a 100% way, it shows that we should be creating 100% change in a 15% way."

It's a paradox, but "100% change" is far more likely to result from a series of highly leveraged 15% initiatives than a large-scale program or "big play." To illustrate the power of this principle in action, the next section revisits our opening case study and some highly publicized success stories of organizations that have achieved quantum change. In all of them, the 15% principle is a major driving force.

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