Change management is often brought in when initiatives stall. Adoption is uneven. Managers are inconsistent. Resistance surfaces. Escalations multiply. The assumption is that behavioural alignment will stabilise performance. Sometimes it does. But when instability originates in the operating model itself, no amount of change management can compensate.
What an operating model actually shapes
An operating model determines who decides, who is accountable, how work flows across boundaries, what gets measured, and what gets rewarded. It defines authority, incentives, sequencing, and coordination. When those elements contradict the stated change, behavioural reinforcement cannot override them. People respond to structure more consistently than they respond to messaging.1
How the misplacement happens
A common pattern looks like this: a new strategy is launched, change management is engaged to drive adoption, and communications and training are executed well. But decision rights remain ambiguous. Performance metrics reward old behaviours. Incentives conflict with stated priorities. Cross-functional dependencies are unresolved. Adoption lags. The response is often more communication, more reinforcement, stronger sponsorship messaging. The effort intensifies at the behavioural layer. But the operating model remains unchanged.
Consider these scenarios. A transformation calls for cross-functional collaboration, but performance reviews remain siloed and competitive. A digital platform is introduced, but authority for process redesign sits outside the transformation mandate. A new governance structure is announced, but decision rights are not clarified across layers. In each case, individuals are asked to behave differently within a structure that still rewards prior patterns.2 Change management cannot override that contradiction. At best, it can create temporary alignment. At worst, it absorbs the tension and delays correction.3
The structural consequence
When behavioural work attempts to compensate for operating model gaps, managers buffer upward, teams negotiate informally, and escalations increase. Practitioners facilitate repeatedly. Sponsors intervene episodically. But because authority, incentives, and accountability remain misaligned, instability returns. Over time, change management itself may be viewed as ineffective — not because it failed, but because it was positioned to solve a structural problem behaviourally.
Admitting that the operating model requires adjustment is heavier than strengthening engagement. It may require revisiting mandate boundaries, redistributing authority, altering incentive structures, or slowing implementation. Those interventions are visible and political. Behavioural reinforcement is more contained. So organisations lean toward it first.
Where the boundary lies
Change management is powerful when strategy is coherent, decision rights are clear, and incentives support the desired behaviour.4 In that environment, behavioural alignment accelerates integration. But when the operating model contradicts the change, behavioural alignment cannot stabilise it. It can only cushion the friction. Recognising that boundary protects both the discipline and the organisation.
When operating model design is left unexamined, instability is repeatedly interpreted as resistance or misalignment. The organisation expends energy correcting behaviour instead of recalibrating structure. This is one way of understanding how operating model design interacts with sponsorship authority and strategic coherence. Other pieces in this series explore how leadership recalibration determines whether change stabilises or fragments.
-
Argyris, C. (1957). Personality and Organization: The Conflict Between System and the Individual. Harper & Brothers. Argyris establishes that the formal organisation’s structural requirements — its authority relationships, performance expectations, and incentive design — shape actual behaviour reliably and independently of espoused values or leadership messaging. When structural conditions conflict with stated change intent, people comply with structural requirements. Describing this compliance as “resistance” misidentifies the mechanism: the structure is producing exactly the behaviour that structure was designed to produce. ↩︎
-
Tushman, M. L., & Romanelli, E. (1985). “Organizational Evolution: A Metamorphosis Model of Convergence and Reorientation.” In L. L. Cummings & B. M. Staw (Eds.), Research in Organizational Behavior, Vol. 7, pp. 171–222. JAI Press. Tushman and Romanelli demonstrate that durable strategic change requires concurrent realignment across strategy, structure, and human systems. Change that is implemented at the strategy or messaging level without corresponding structural realignment is inherently unstable — the structural context continuously reasserts the behavioural patterns it was designed to produce. Asking individuals to behave differently inside a structure that still rewards prior patterns is not a transition challenge; it is a structural design failure. ↩︎
-
Sterman, J. D. (2000). Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World. McGraw-Hill. Sterman’s analysis of policy resistance shows that symptomatic interventions that relieve immediate pressure without addressing the underlying system structure produce a characteristic dynamic: the more effectively the symptom is managed, the longer the structural correction is deferred, and the larger the eventual correction required. Change management that absorbs the tension of an unchanged operating model creates policy resistance of exactly this type — it reduces the urgency of structural recalibration precisely when that recalibration would be cheapest. ↩︎
-
Beer, M., Eisenstat, R. A., & Spector, B. (1990). “Why Change Programs Don’t Produce Change.” Harvard Business Review, 68(6), 158–166. Beer and colleagues demonstrate that successful transformation requires unit-level alignment of tasks, coordination, commitment, competence, and management that support the desired strategy — before individual behaviour change becomes sustainable. Change management is effective not when it overcomes structural misalignment but when structural alignment provides the conditions under which behavioural reinforcement can actually work. The sequence matters: structure first, then behaviour. ↩︎