The 5 Mistakes That Derail Transformations (And How to Avoid Them)
- Kelly Brogdon Geyer
- 3 days ago
- 11 min read
It's January. Budgets are approved, transformation projects are launching, and leadership teams are energized by that "fresh start" feeling that comes with a new year.
By March, many of these well-intentioned initiatives will already be showing signs of trouble.
After 20+ years helping organizations navigate change, I've noticed something: the mistakes that derail transformations often happen in the first few weeks. And they're almost always the same ones.
The good news is that they're completely avoidable.
Here are the five mistakes I see organizations make at the start of Q1 and what to do instead if you want your transformation to actually succeed.
Mistake #1: Launching Without Listening
It's January 2nd. Leadership has spent November and December planning the transformation roadmap. They're excited. The strategy is clear. The timeline is set.
So they roll it out on Day 1.
"Here's what we're doing this year. Here's why it matters. Let's go!"
Meanwhile, your teams are still processing what happened in Q4. Maybe it was a brutal year-end push. Maybe there were layoffs or reorganizations. Maybe they're just exhausted from the holiday season while trying to close out projects.
They're not ready for "what's next." They're still dealing with "what just happened."
When you launch a transformation without first understanding where people are emotionally and mentally, you're building on unstable ground.
The Real Cost
Teams feel unheard. They interpret the new initiative as leadership being out of touch with reality. Resistance forms immediately, not because the transformation is bad, but because people feel like no one cared enough to ask how they're doing first.
I've seen transformation leads genuinely confused: "We communicated the vision clearly. Why isn't anyone excited?"
Because excitement requires readiness. And readiness requires being acknowledged.
What to Do Instead
Start with listening sessions.
Before you launch anything, create space for people to process what they experienced in the previous quarter or year. This doesn't have to be therapy. It's strategic.
Here's what this looks like in practice:
Schedule small group conversations (8-12 people) in the first two weeks of January. Ask:
What worked well for us last quarter?
What was challenging?
What are you still thinking about as we start the year?
What do you need from leadership as we move forward?
Then (and this is critical) actually listen. Don't defend. Don't explain. Don't jump to solutions. Just listen and acknowledge what you hear.
One client did this before launching a major digital transformation. In listening sessions, they discovered teams were still burned out from a failed implementation six months earlier.
They adjusted the timeline, addressed specific concerns from that failure, and built in recovery time. The result? When they launched, people were ready. Adoption rates were 40% higher than projected.
Key takeaway: Meet people where they are before asking them to go where you want them to be.
Mistake #2: Over-Programming
January has this magical "fresh start" energy. Everyone's motivated. Leadership wants to capitalize on it.
So they pack Q1 with:
New initiative kickoff
Leadership training workshops
Process implementation
Team building offsites
Strategic planning sessions
Performance review season
Plus everyone's regular job
"Let's use this Q1 momentum!"
By February, teams are drowning. By March, nothing's getting done well because everything's competing for attention.
The Real Cost
When you over-program Q1, several things happen:
Quality suffers. People rush through trainings to get back to "real work." They attend workshops but don't have time to practice what they learned. Initiatives launch but don't get proper attention.
Change fatigue sets in immediately. That fresh start energy? Burned through by week three.
Nothing sticks. Without time to absorb, practice, and integrate new ways of working, people revert to old habits the moment pressure increases.
I once worked with a company that scheduled three major change initiatives for Q1: new CRM implementation, Agile transformation, and leadership development program. By week six, everything was behind schedule and people were exhausted. When we spread these out across the year, completion rates tripled and actual adoption happened.
What to Do Instead
Pace your change. Transformation is a marathon, not a sprint. Instead of cramming everything into Q1, map your change initiatives across the full year:
Q1: Launch one major initiative, complete foundational work on others
Q2: Deepen adoption of Q1 initiative, launch next priority
Q3: Assess and adjust, continue building momentum
Q4: Consolidate gains, prepare for next year
Build in integration time. After any workshop, training, or new process launch, people need time to:
Practice the new skill or behavior
Ask questions as they encounter real situations
Make mistakes and learn from them
Build the new approach into their routine
A good rule: For every hour of training or new content, people need at least 3-4 hours of practice and integration time.
Key takeaway: The organizations that win aren't the ones who do the most in Q1. They're the ones who pace change sustainably across the year.
Mistake #3: Ignoring Change Fatigue Signals
Your team is pushing back on the new initiative. They're asking questions that feel like resistance. Energy is low in meetings. People are saying things like "Another change?" or "We just finished the last transformation."
And leadership's response? "They're just resistant to change. We need to push harder. They'll come around."
But what if it's not resistance? What if it's exhaustion?
After years of constant change (pandemic pivots, digital transformations, reorganizations, budget cuts, new strategies) many teams aren't resistant. They're depleted.
There's a difference. And treating exhaustion as resistance makes everything worse.
The Real Cost
When you misdiagnose change fatigue as resistance:
You add more communication (which feels like noise)
You increase the pace (which deepens exhaustion)
You question people's commitment (which damages trust)
You create actual resistance where there was only fatigue
People disengage. High performers leave. And your transformation loses the very people you need most.
One healthcare organization I worked with was experiencing massive "resistance" to a new patient management system. Leadership planned a campaign to "overcome resistance."
When we dug deeper, we found teams weren't resistant. Tthey were running on empty after two years of COVID-related changes. They wanted the new system. They just had no capacity to learn it while maintaining current patient care levels.
We built in transition support, adjusted the timeline, and brought in temporary help during the learning curve. "Resistance" almost completely disappeared.
What to Do Instead
Assess your organization's capacity for change before layering on more. Ask these questions honestly:
How much change have we asked of people in the last 12-18 months?
What's our current team energy level? (Ask them, don't assume)
Do people have actual bandwidth for something new?
Are we seeing signs of burnout? (Increased sick days, turnover, mistakes, disengagement)
Learn to recognize change fatigue signals:
Cynicism about new initiatives ("Here we go again...")
Questions that sound like resistance but are really about capacity ("When are we supposed to find time for this?")
High performers becoming quiet or withdrawn
Increased errors or quality issues
People doing the minimum required, nothing extra
Sometimes the bravest thing a leader can do is pause. If your organization is showing signs of change fatigue, you have options:
Delay: "We're pushing this to Q2 so we can consolidate what we launched last quarter."
Slow down: "We're extending the timeline to allow for better integration."
Simplify: "We're focusing on these three core elements, dropping the rest."
Support: "We're bringing in additional resources during the transition."
Key takeaway: You can't power through change fatigue with more momentum. You have to address it directly.
Mistake #4: Setting Metrics Without Meaning
Leadership defines success for the transformation:
90% completion of training modules
85% adoption rate of new system
100% attendance at kickoff events
75% of teams using new process by end of Q1
These metrics look good in a steering committee meeting. They're specific, measurable, and time-bound.
They're also completely disconnected from what actually matters.
Meanwhile, employees see these metrics and think: "So leadership cares that we completed the training. But do they care if it actually helped us work better?"
The Real Cost
When your metrics focus on activity rather than impact:
People game the system. They complete the training but don't apply it. They "adopt" the new tool but keep doing workarounds. Numbers look great while nothing really changes.
You measure the wrong things. You hit your 90% completion target while actual collaboration gets worse, or customer experience deteriorates, or people feel more frustrated than before.
You lose trust. People see leadership celebrating metrics that don't reflect their lived experience. It reinforces the perception that leadership doesn't understand what's really happening.
I worked with a company that proudly achieved 95% completion of their new performance management training. Success, right?
Except six months later, employee surveys showed people found the new process more bureaucratic, less helpful, and more time-consuming than the old one. They hit their metric.
They failed their transformation.
What to Do Instead
Connect your measures to outcomes that matter to people.
Good transformation metrics answer the question: "Is work actually better because of this change?"
Instead of measuring completion, measure impact:
Bad metric: "90% of managers completed coaching training"
Good metric: "Managers report feeling more confident handling difficult conversations" + "Direct reports report receiving more useful feedback"
Bad metric: "85% adoption of new project management tool"
Good metric: "Project teams report clearer visibility into priorities and dependencies" + "Time spent in status meetings decreased by 30%"
Bad metric: "100% of teams attended Agile workshop"
Good metric: "Teams report faster decision-making and fewer hand-off delays" + "Cycle time from idea to delivery decreased by 25%"
Ask yourself: What experience do we want people to have because of this change?
Then measure that experience:
Improved collaboration
Reduced friction in their daily work
Better ability to serve customers
More clarity about priorities
Faster access to information they need
Feeling more equipped to do their jobs well
These are harder to measure than completion rates. But they're what actually matters.
Key takeaway: If your success metrics wouldn't make an employee say "Yes, that's what I care about too," they're the wrong metrics.
Mistake #5: Forgetting the Middle
Leadership gets it. They've been in the planning meetings. They understand the strategy. They're aligned and ready.
Frontline teams get attention too. There's training. There's support. There are resources dedicated to helping them adopt new ways of working.
But middle managers? They're supposed to just "figure it out."
They're expected to:
Explain the change to their teams (with the same limited information they received)
Keep day-to-day operations running smoothly
Manage resistance and concerns
Model new behaviors they haven't been trained on
Hit their regular performance targets
Coach their teams through the transition
Provide feedback on implementation
All while managing their own concerns about the change.
The Real Cost
When you forget the middle layer:
They become bottlenecks instead of amplifiers. They can't explain what they don't understand. They can't model behaviors they haven't learned. They can't support teams when they're struggling themselves.
Mixed messages multiply. Each manager interprets the change differently, leading to inconsistent implementation across teams.
Your best managers burn out. The ones who try to figure it out on their own, support their teams, and make it work anyway. They exhaust themselves and leave.
The transformation stalls. Senior leadership wonders why adoption isn't happening. Frontline teams feel unsupported. And middle managers are stuck in the middle, blamed by both.
One manufacturing client was frustrated their transformation wasn't scaling beyond pilot teams. When we interviewed middle managers, we found they understood the what (new processes) but not the why (business case) or the how (coaching their teams through it).
They were trying their best with almost no support. Once we built manager-specific enablement, including peer learning groups where they could share challenges, implementation success rates tripled.
What to Do Instead
Equip your middle layer with the context, tools, and support they need.
Middle managers are your change amplifiers. Invest in them accordingly.
They need context:
Why this change, why now?
What problem are we solving?
How does this connect to our strategy?
What stays the same, what's changing?
What success looks like at the organizational level
They need tools:
Talking points to discuss the change with their teams
Responses to likely questions and concerns
Resources to point people to
Clear escalation paths for issues they can't resolve
Time built into their week to support their teams
They need support:
Training before they're expected to train others
Practice time to build confidence
Peer learning groups to share challenges and solutions
Regular check-ins with their leaders
Permission to say "I don't know" and get help
Here's a practical framework:
Before launch:
Brief managers 1-2 weeks before you brief their teams
Give them time to ask questions, process concerns, prepare
Equip them with team conversation guides
During rollout:
Create manager-specific support channels (Slack, regular calls)
Host weekly "office hours" where they can get questions answered
Share manager-facing resources (not just team-facing ones)
After launch:
Check in regularly: "What questions are you hearing?" "What's hard?" "What help do you need?"
Celebrate managers who are doing it well; share their practices
Adjust based on their feedback. They see what's working and what isn't
Key takeaway: Your middle managers will make or break your transformation. Treat them like the strategic partners they are.
What Actually Works in Q1
The organizations that thrive through change in 2026 won't necessarily be the ones who move fastest.
They'll be the ones who move most intentionally.
That means:
Starting with listening, not launching
Pacing change sustainably across the year, not cramming everything into Q1
Treating change fatigue as real, not as resistance to overcome
Measuring what matters to people, not just what's easy to count
Supporting the middle layer as strategic partners, not expecting them to figure it out alone
These aren't complicated fixes. But they require something harder than complexity: discipline.
The discipline to slow down when momentum says speed up.
The discipline to listen when urgency says launch.
The discipline to pause when pressure says push harder.
The discipline to invest in the middle when all eyes are on the top and bottom.
The discipline to measure meaning when metrics demand completion rates.
Your Q1 Transformation Readiness Check
Before you launch (or continue) your transformation, ask yourself:
Have we listened? Did we create space for people to process where they've been before we ask them to go somewhere new?
Have we paced? Are we spreading change sustainably, or cramming too much into too little time?
Have we assessed capacity? Do people actually have bandwidth for this, or are we adding to already-full plates?
Have we measured meaning? Do our success metrics reflect experiences that matter to people, or just activities that are easy to count?
Have we supported the middle? Do our middle managers have what they need to lead this change, or are we expecting them to figure it out alone?
If you can't answer yes to all five, you're not ready to launch. And that's okay.
Better to take two more weeks to get these foundations right than to spend six months trying to fix a transformation that started on shaky ground.
What I'm Seeing in 2026
As we move through Q1, I'm hearing the same questions from clients:
"How do we energize teams after a tough 2025?"
"How do we pace transformation when everything feels urgent?"
"How do we know if it's resistance or exhaustion?"
These are the right questions. And they all point to the same insight: the old playbook of "announce, train, hope for the best" isn't working anymore.
The organizations succeeding with change in 2026 are the ones who:
Lead with humanity, not just strategy
Build with people, not just for them
Measure impact, not just activity
Support the entire organization, not just the top and bottom
Pace for sustainability, not just short-term wins
This is harder than the old way. It requires more patience, more discipline, more investment in the middle.
But it actually works.
What Q1 Mistakes Are You Seeing?
I'd love to compare notes. What transformation challenges are you navigating in Q1? What's working? What's not?
Book a complimentary 30-minute strategy session and let's talk about how to set your transformation up for success. Not just in Q1, but for the entire year.
About the Author
Kelly Brogdon Geyer is a Change Management & Leadership Development Consultant based in Austria, with 15+ years of experience helping organizations turn transformation into competitive advantage. She specializes in cultural integration, leadership capability building, and making change actually stick. Her approach, the Momentum TransforMate Ecosystem (MTE), focuses on sustainable transformation that builds organizational change capacity.
Services:
Change Management Advisory (M&A integration, organizational transformation)
Leadership Development Consulting (custom programs)
Workshops (Leading Through Change, Intercultural Collaboration, Strategic Planning)
Executive & Leadership Coaching
Related Resources:
Comments