880 senior HR
and people leaders
11
countries
Organisations of
250+ employees
Multiple
sectors
Fieldwork
May 2026
Independent
research
Change is no longer episodic.
It is ambient.
Restructures. Acquisitions. AI acceleration. Operating model shifts. Strategy resets.
rganisations now go through significant change every 3.2 years on average, with half experiencing it every two to three years. Many are still recovering from one major change when the next arrives.
Most organisations know this. Most believe they are handling it.
96% have frameworks for discussing leadership behaviour and working styles. Only 33% use them consistently and widely.
The gap between having frameworks and embedding them is what this report is about.
Behavioural readiness is the most underestimated performance risk in organisational change.
Every significant change arrives with a plan behind it. A structure, a timeline, a communication cascade, a set of milestones.
What the plan assumes is that the people delivering it will hold steady: that leaders will stay consistent, teams will stay aligned and people will adapt as the ground shifts beneath them. That assumption is rarely prepared for and almost never measured.
Behavioural readiness is the ability of leaders and teams to remain clear, consistent and constructive when change puts pressure on them and the way they work together.
It is measurable. It is consequential. And it is closable, but only if organisations recognise it exists.
If you lose the people; you lose the emotional challenge, and you won't win the rational challenge of change.
For heads of change and transformation
The report quantifies the behavioural risks that sit outside the programme plan but derail performance anyway: decision-making confusion, leadership misalignment, fatigue and loss of trust.
For HR, people and L&D leaders
It provides evidence for what you've long suspected but rarely been able to measure: the human side of change is not a parallel concern to delivery. It is the condition delivery depends on.
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