Why Strategic Change Outperforms Drastic Overhauls

This expert opinion by Andrea Olson, CEO of Pragmadik, was originally published on Inc.com.

Change isn’t synonymous with chaos. Yet for some reason, when organizations sense they need to evolve, they pull the fire alarm. Suddenly, it’s a full-scale reorg, a new C-suite title, and 10,000 hours of “transformational” workshops. What do they get in return? A diluted strategy, disoriented teams, and a lot of wasted money. 

According to McKinsey, up to 70 percent of change programs fail. It’s not because leaders lack good intentions, but because they default to sweeping, catch-all solutions rather than applying change with precision. It’s like deciding to bulldoze your house because your faucet’s leaking. 

Strategic Change Isn’t Just Smarter—It’s Stickier. 

Targeted, strategic change focuses on the few critical shifts that can unlock significant value. Instead of boiling the ocean, it boils a specific pot. It’s the difference between saying, “We need to be more innovative,” which is nothing, versus, “We’re shifting 30 percent of our product development resources toward customer co-creation pilots over the next quarter.” 

One company that exemplified this approach is Lego. In the early 2000s, it was hemorrhaging cash—$300 million in losses by 2004. Its initial reaction? Diversify like crazy. Theme parks, video games, apparel. Guess what? It made things worse. 

What turned it around? Strategic focus. CEO Jørgen Vig Knudstorp didn’t try to change everything. Instead, he got specific. The company trimmed the fat, exiting non-core areas and doubling down on what made Lego iconic—the brick system and imaginative play. It reorganized teams only where needed, tightened product lines, and leaned into direct collaboration with users—hello, Lego Ideas. By 2015, revenue had tripled, and it had become the world’s largest toy company. 

The Hidden Cost Of Blanket Change 

According to Prosci, the average cost of a failed change initiative in a midsize company is around $1.5 million. But what is the cost of employee disengagement from misaligned or confusing change? That’s harder to measure. Gallup, however, estimates that disengaged employees cost U.S. companies $1.9 trillion annually in lost productivity. 

Many of those employees aren’t disengaged because they hate change. They’re disengaged because the change feels arbitrary, overwhelming, and unrelated to their work. When strategic change is focused and aligned to purpose, people get it. They see themselves in it, and they can do something with it. 

A Steering Guide, Not A Sledgehammer 

At this point, you might ask how do you know where to focus change? This is where the steering guide methodology comes in. Yes, shameless plug, but for good reason. It’s designed to identify where perception gaps exist between leadership’s strategic intent and frontline execution. By measuring readiness, relevance, and resonance, it pinpoints where change will stick and where it’ll slide off like water on Teflon. 

Take the example of a global B2B manufacturer whose leadership wanted to become customer-centric. However, instead of rewriting the org chart, adding a chief customer officer, or launching a sweeping CRM overhaul, we created a steering guide. The steering guide defined what “customer centricity” meant, how to leverage it as a differentiator, and how every person in the organization—from the C-suite to the finance team—could embody it, based on their role and responsibilities. 

The issue wasn’t more tools or customer service training. It was decision autonomy across the organization. Understanding how to live and breathe customer centricity no matter where you sat in the organization. Fixing that bottleneck, and only that, led to a 22 percent improvement in customer satisfaction within nine months. There were no major investments or glossy PowerPoint presentations—just precise, strategic change. 

Strategic changes is less theatrics, more impact 

Organizations don’t fail because they resist change. They fail because they adopt the wrong kind of change. Strategic change isn’t always sexy. It’s not flashy, and it doesn’t come with a new logo or a drum circle. Yet, it works because it focuses on what matters most and lets the rest breathe. 

So, the next time your leadership team feels the itch to “do something big,” pause. Ask what small, high-impact shifts could move the needle. In the business of change, precision beats performance art every time.