Change initiatives fail because they focus on rational persuasion - business cases, communication plans, training sessions - while ignoring the psychological forces that keep people anchored to existing behaviour. The pattern is consistent across change management, AI adoption, and digital transformation: 70% fail to achieve their stated goals. The cause is structural, not situational. The SUE | Influence Framework©, described in Astrid Groenewegen’s The Art of Designing Behaviour (2024), reveals that every change always competes with four forces: Pains and Gains driving change, Comforts and Anxieties blocking it. Because blocking forces operate at System 1 speed - automatically, below conscious awareness - rational arguments alone cannot overcome them.
The Consistent Pattern Across All Change Types
Different initiative. Same failure rate. Same pattern. Something is consistently missing from the standard change management toolkit - and it is missing not just in one type of change, but across all of them. That is not a coincidence. It is a structural diagnosis.
What is missing is the behavioural layer. The layer that governs what people actually do on a Tuesday afternoon - as distinct from what they agree to in a workshop, what they learn in a training session, or what they commit to in a town hall. Communication addresses beliefs. Training addresses skills. Neither addresses behaviour. And behaviour is what organisations need to change.
Astrid Groenewegen names this pattern in The Art of Designing Behaviour (2024): de missende laag. The missing layer. It appears in every failed change initiative, across every domain, regardless of the quality of the strategy or the sincerity of the intent. The good news is that once you understand why the layer is missing, you know exactly where to start fixing it.
The Pattern Behind Every Failed Change Initiative
When a change initiative fails, the post-mortem usually focuses on execution: the leadership wasn’t aligned enough, the communication wasn’t clear enough, the training wasn’t thorough enough. These explanations are not wrong. They are just incomplete. They describe symptoms while missing the structural cause.
The structural cause is this: standard change management treats behaviour change as a rational problem. It assumes that if people understand why change is necessary, receive adequate training, and feel supported through the process, they will change how they behave. This assumption is wrong. Not completely wrong - understanding, skill, and support are necessary conditions. But they are not sufficient ones.
Behaviour is not primarily governed by understanding. Behaviour is governed by habits, social norms, default options, and the friction levels embedded in the environment. These are System 1 forces - automatic, fast, operating below conscious decision-making. A communication campaign operates in System 2. So does a training module. And so does a leadership roadshow. None of these tools addresses the System 1 level where actual behaviour is determined.
Understanding why you need to change does not change how you behave. It changes what you say when someone asks why you haven’t changed yet.
This is the same structural failure appearing in three different change domains. In change management: communication campaigns produce stated support, not behavioural change. In AI adoption: tools are provided and trained, but the daily work patterns do not shift. In digital transformation: the new system goes live, but people find workarounds to continue doing what they were doing before.
The SUE | Influence Framework©: Why Change Always Competes
The SUE | Influence Framework© provides the diagnostic structure that standard change management is missing. It maps the four forces that determine whether any behaviour changes - for any person, in any context, in response to any change initiative.
The four forces that determine whether change sticks
Every change initiative competes with the status quo. The Influence Framework maps that competition across four forces. Understanding which forces dominate in your specific context is the starting point for designing change that actually changes behaviour.
The current situation is visibly costly: The existing process is inefficient, the current tools are insufficient, the status quo is producing problems that people can see and feel. The burning platform is real. It is just not burning hot enough to override the automatic pull of habit.
External pressure creates urgency: Competitive dynamics, regulatory requirements, or leadership mandates create genuine urgency. People acknowledge the need to change. The acknowledgement does not translate into changed behaviour.
Personal frustration is high: Many people genuinely want things to work differently. The wanting is real and widely shared. It just does not produce behaviour change on its own.
The benefit is real but abstract and future: The new process will be faster. The new tool will save hours. The new way of working will reduce errors. These benefits are genuine - but they are hypothetical until the behaviour change has already happened and sustained itself. People must invest effort now for a reward that materialises later. The economics of this are poor.
Career advantage motivates early adopters: Being seen as someone who embraces change carries social and professional benefits for a subset of employees. These early adopters are valuable, but they are not the majority, and they are not the ones who determine whether the initiative succeeds at scale.
Existing habits are automatic and effortless: The old way requires no conscious thought. It is embedded in daily routines and muscle memory. Every deviation from it requires deliberate effort - and deliberate effort cannot be sustained indefinitely. This is not resistance. It is how cognition works.
Change fatigue is structural: The organisation went through a major change programme eighteen months ago. And a large digital rollout the year before that. There is a genuine comfort in the belief that the current situation represents hard-earned stability. The next change initiative is received through this filter.
Social norms anchor behaviour: If the people around you are not using the new tool, not using it feels appropriate. The social norm is among the most powerful behavioural forces. Change programmes that address individual motivation while ignoring social context are fighting the wrong battle.
Competence anxiety is pervasive and invisible: The new system, process, or tool requires new skills. The fear of being visibly incompetent - in front of colleagues, managers, customers - is a significant and almost never acknowledged barrier. People do not say “I’m afraid of looking stupid.” They say “I prefer the old system.”
“This too shall pass” is accurate pattern recognition: Employees who have lived through multiple change initiatives learn that if they wait long enough, the initiative loses momentum. This is not cynicism. It is an empirically grounded prediction based on lived experience.
Identity threat is underestimated: When the change challenges the way someone does their job - or what their role even means - it triggers identity-level resistance. This is the deepest and most durable form of Anxiety, and no rational argument can address it at the level where it operates.
The key insight: Standard change management concentrates on the driving forces - building the business case, communicating the Gains, addressing the Pains. The blocking forces receive a communication campaign at best. But Comforts and Anxieties are not arguments to be countered. They are System 1 forces that must be addressed through environment design - by making the new behaviour easier, more socially normal, and more immediately rewarding than the old one.
Three Domains, One Structural Failure
The same Influence Framework pattern appears differently depending on the type of change initiative. But the underlying structure is identical. Here is how it looks across the three most common domains.
Change Management: The Communication Campaign That Understood Everything, Changed Nothing
The classic change management failure plays out like this. A large organisation launches a major transformation. The communication is excellent. The business case is clear and compelling. Awareness is high. Stated support is high. Six months in, process compliance sits at 30%, and the change team is producing more communication to close the gap.
The communication created understanding. It did not create new habits. The old processes were embedded in daily routines that no one redesigned. The new process required conscious effort every time. Conscious effort is not a sustainable basis for behaviour change. The campaign spoke to System 2. The actual behaviour lived in System 1.
AI Adoption: The Tool That Was Rolled Out but Not Used
Eighty-eight percent of employees now use AI tools. Six percent report meaningful productivity gains. The gap between access and impact is not a training gap. Employees have been trained. They know how to use the tools. The gap is behavioural - the daily work patterns have not shifted to integrate the tools into actual workflows.
AI tools are provided to individuals. Work happens in systems. The existing system - the meeting rhythms, the approval processes, the deliverable formats, the team norms - does not require or reward AI use. Individuals who try to integrate AI into their workflow are working against the grain of the system. Most stop trying.
Digital Transformation: The System That Went Live but Wasn’t Used
The new CRM, ERP, or collaboration platform goes live on schedule. The migration is technically complete. Three months later, the data quality in the new system is poor because many users are maintaining parallel processes in the old system or in spreadsheets. The digital transformation is technically complete and behaviourally incomplete.
Digital transformation treats adoption as a technical and training challenge. Get the system live, train the users, and adoption will follow. It does not follow. The old system was integrated into daily routines that were not redesigned. The new system requires finding different information in different places, with different workflows. Every deviation from the old routine requires conscious effort. People revert.
What Actually Works: The SWAC Tool Applied to Change
The SWAC Tool© - Spark, Want, Again, Can - provides the intervention framework for designing change that addresses System 1, not just System 2. Here is what it means in practice for any change initiative.
-
Start with an Influence Framework Diagnosis
Before planning any communication or training, map the four forces for your specific change and audience. Which Pains are driving the need for change? Which Gains are promised? Which Comforts make the status quo feel safe? Which Anxieties make the change feel risky? Without this diagnosis, the change plan is addressing symptoms. The diagnosis takes a day. The change programme takes months. The investment ratio is worth examining.
-
Redesign the Moments That Matter (SPARK)
Every change has two or three critical moments in the daily work environment where the old behaviour is most deeply embedded - and where a redesigned trigger would produce the most impact. Identify those moments. Then redesign them: change the default option, modify the interface, alter the social context. The behaviour will follow the environment. The environment does not follow the communication plan.
-
Address the Competence Anxiety Directly (CAN)
Competence anxiety - the fear of being visibly incompetent in front of colleagues - is the most powerful and least addressed blocker in change initiatives. Design psychologically safe spaces for failure: sessions where errors are expected and normalised, where the new behaviour is practised without consequences, where being a beginner is explicitly endorsed. This is not soft management. It is friction removal at the System 1 level.
-
Make the New Behaviour Socially Visible (WANT)
Human behaviour is powerfully shaped by what we observe others doing. If the people around me are not changing, not changing feels appropriate. Make the new behaviour visible: celebrate early adopters publicly, create spaces where the new approach is the demonstrated norm, ensure that managers visibly model the behaviours they are asking for. Social proof is not a communication technique - it is a System 1 intervention.
-
Build Repetition Into the System (AGAIN)
Behaviour becomes habit through repetition in a consistent context. A one-time training session is not repetition. A weekly team ritual is. A redesigned default in a digital system is. A monthly recognition of new-behaviour examples is. Design for repetition from the start - not as a reminder campaign, but as a structural feature of how work gets done. Ask: what will cause this new behaviour to happen again next Tuesday, without anyone having to remember?
Read the Deep Dives
The pattern described above is analysed in detail for three specific initiative types. Each article covers the full Influence Framework diagnosis, three scenario analyses, and five specific SWAC interventions for that domain.
Why Change Management Fails
70% of change initiatives fail. The structural cause is always the same: the behavioural layer is missing. Full Influence Framework analysis - what communication plans address and what they leave untouched.
Read the full analysis → HR & Organisational BehaviourWhy AI Adoption Fails
88% of employees use AI tools. 6% see results. The gap is not a training gap - it is a behavioural gap. The forces that make AI adoption stall despite widespread access.
Read the full analysis → LeadershipWhy Digital Transformation Fails
The system goes live. Adoption does not follow. Why technical implementation and behaviour change are different problems - and which one digital transformation programmes consistently ignore.
Read the full analysis → HR & Organisational BehaviourWhy Employee Engagement Fails
23% of employees worldwide are engaged. Organisations invest billions in surveys and programmes. The scores barely move. The reason: engagement is not an attitude problem - it is a behaviour design problem.
Read the full analysis → HR & Organisational BehaviourWhy Software Adoption Fails
70% of software rollouts fail to deliver expected ROI. Only 49% of features are actually used. The problem is not the software - it is that the old workflow lives in System 1 and the new tool requires System 2.
Read the full analysis →Behavioural Design by Industry
The same behavioural pattern plays out across every industry. These pages apply the Influence Framework and SWAC Tool to sector-specific challenges.
Behavioural Design for Healthcare
50% of patients don’t follow treatment plans. The problem is not information. It is behaviour. How to redesign patient journeys, clinical environments, and staff systems.
Read the full analysis → Behavioural DesignBehavioural Design for Financial Services
Customers know they should save more. They don’t. Loss aversion, present bias, and status quo bias drive financial behaviour more than any product feature.
Read the full analysis → Behavioural DesignBehavioural Design for the Public Sector
Policies designed for rational citizens fail. Citizen participation, energy transition, tax compliance: behaviour is shaped by defaults and friction, not information.
Read the full analysis → Behavioural DesignBehavioural Design for Retail
70% of online shopping carts are abandoned. Loyalty programmes reward but don’t retain. The gap between what customers say and what they do.
Read the full analysis → Behavioural DesignBehavioural Design for Education
Training completion rates are high. Behaviour transfer is near zero. Knowledge does not change behaviour. Environment design does.
Read the full analysis → Behavioural DesignBehavioural Design for Tech
Users sign up, explore for a week, and quietly disappear. Feature adoption stalls. The problem is not your product. It is the gap between intent and action.
Read the full analysis → Behavioural DesignBehavioural Design for Insurance
Customers underinsure their most valuable assets and churn at renewal. The product is not the problem. How people perceive risk is.
Read the full analysis → Behavioural DesignBehavioural Design for Telecom
Customers who rate you 8 out of 10 switch to a competitor next month. Churn is not a pricing problem. It is a behavioural one.
Read the full analysis → Behavioural DesignBehavioural Design for FMCG
Your product wins blind taste tests. Market share does not move. Habit and shelf-level defaults beat product quality every time.
Read the full analysis → Behavioural DesignBehavioural Design for Fintech
Users sign up for your savings app enthusiastically. Three months later, 70% of accounts have a balance of zero. The gap between financial intent and action.
Read the full analysis →Frequently Asked Questions
Why do change initiatives fail so consistently?
Change initiatives fail because they treat behaviour change as a rational problem. The standard toolkit - business cases, workshops, town halls - addresses understanding while ignoring the System 1 forces that govern actual behaviour. The SUE Influence Framework identifies four forces: Pains and Gains drive people toward change, Comforts and Anxieties block it. Most change programmes amplify the driving forces and leave the blocking forces untouched. Because blocking forces operate automatically and below conscious awareness, more communication cannot overcome them.
What is the 70% failure rate of change initiatives based on?
The 70% failure rate is drawn from decades of McKinsey research and is cited in Astrid Groenewegen’s The Art of Designing Behaviour (2024). It applies consistently across change types: process transformations, technology rollouts, cultural change programmes, and strategic pivots. It does not mean 70% of change efforts are abandoned - it means 70% fail to achieve their stated goals, even when technically completed.
What is the difference between change management and behavioural design?
Change management focuses on planning, communication, and stakeholder alignment - primarily System 2, rational processes. Behavioural design focuses on the environment: the defaults, moments, social contexts, and friction levels that govern what people actually do, regardless of what they think or intend. Behavioural design provides what change management currently lacks: a structured account of why people behave as they do, and what to redesign to shift that behaviour at the System 1 level.
What is the SUE Influence Framework and how does it relate to change?
The SUE | Influence Framework©, developed by SUE Behavioural Design and described in The Art of Designing Behaviour (2024) by Astrid Groenewegen, maps four forces that determine whether behaviour changes: Pains and Gains drive change, while Comforts and Anxieties block it. Applied to any change initiative, it reveals which forces are underaddressed - and provides the basis for designing targeted behavioural interventions rather than additional communication.
How do you apply behavioural design to a change initiative?
Start with an Influence Framework diagnosis: map the four forces for your specific change and audience. Then use the SWAC Tool© to design interventions at Moments that Matter - Spark (triggers for the new behaviour), Want (social motivation), Again (habit formation through repetition), and Can (removing friction). The goal is to redesign the environment so the new behaviour is easier, more socially reinforced, and more immediately rewarding than the old one.
PS
I have spent years watching organisations invest enormous amounts of energy into change programmes that produce understanding but not change. The pattern is almost always the same: the driving forces are built, the blocking forces are left to communication. What I’ve learned is that the most important question to ask at the start of any change initiative is not “what do we need to communicate?” but “what are the Comforts and Anxieties that are going to make this fail?” That question leads to very different designs - and much better results. If you want to explore how to run this diagnosis, the Fundamentals course is the place I’d start. And if you want to read the full framework, Astrid’s The Art of Designing Behaviour (2024) sets it all out.
