A surefire way to shoot yourself in the foot when you're leading a large-scale change effort is to ignore what's on the minds of your employees. In research we conducted for our recently published book, Beyond Performance 2.0 (John Wiley & Sons, July 2019), we found that executives at exactly zero companies that disregarded an analysis of employee mind-sets during a change program rated the transformation as "extremely successful." Conversely, executives at companies that took the time and trouble to address mind-sets were four times more likely than those that didn't to rate their change programs as at least "successful." Executives at companies that took the time and trouble to address mind-sets were four times more likely than those that didn't to rate their change programs as at least "successful." Those numbers reflect the power of mind-set shifts. In human systems, they help to achieve the same effect as the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly or a tadpole into a frog: when employees become open to new ways of looking at what's possible for them and their organization, they can never return to a state of not having that broader perspective, just as butterflies and frogs can't revert to their previous physical forms.

What it takes for businesses to succeed has changed dramatically in the last decade, and the 2020s portend even more change. Many organizations will need to undergo fundamental changes to keep up with evolving technology and competition. But traditional transformation practices, generally grounded in subjective rules of thumb and one-size-fits-all programs, will not be sufficient. Our work with companies pursuing large-scale change suggests they will need a more scientific and evidence-based approach to change. Many companies today are undergoing transformation in order to apply AI and machine learning to product development, operations, marketing, and other operational aspects of the business.