Skip to Content

CEOs and Employees Want Change. So Why Isn’t It Happening?




Within most organizations, the lines between employees are very explicit – nurses versus doctors versus administrators, line managers versus staff, sales versus marketing, local versus headquarters, etc.

This divide stems from social belonging. We are either part of one group or another and we identify ourselves as such. We routinely blame our problems on one another when things go wrong.   Sales didn’t make its numbers because marketing didn’t deliver enough leads.   We have too much inventory because production didn’t do its job.   We’ve all been there. The list can go on and on.


But what if management really wanted to (truly and authentically) change? Would that make a difference to employees? Would that bring the two closer to co-create solutions as opposed to just pointing our problems and blaming each other?



With fewer CEOs resisting change and sticking to their old ways, the issue is not necessarily with the C-suite anymore.   Rather, there’s a big disconnect — a gap of you would, between what’s unfolding in the C-suite and what’s actually happening in the rest of the organization.


So despite a “push for change” from the top, senior leadership’s words fall on deaf ears.   Employees just aren’t feeling it (as evident by stagnating engagement scores). This only causes things to get worse.  When management feels they are not being heard, they assert even more command and control, forcing change, inciting fear and even the occasional “public execution”.  (and there goes that vicious circle again).



Nearly everyone is trying to crack the code on how to turn the CEO’s desire into an organizational reality.   Some organizations are going as far as changing their organizational models, adopting flatter organizations or Holacracy, such as in the recent case with online apparel powerhouse Zappos.  However, even those models have yet to be proven and can mean major disruption to the business.



This drastic shift is behind many of the phenomenons that once took tremendous effort and resources to create.   They are now cheap and scalable in part due to a tremendously networked society.

We see signs of new power everywhere, including major scale political protests being organized and growing in matters of minutes (Occupy Wall Street, Arab Spring, Ferguson, to name a few), to upstart businesses upending traditional industries and rapidly taking market share in a matter of months.   New business models such as the ones behind Facebook, Youtube, Uber, AirBNB and Etsy are built on new power. Everyone can be a creator of content, goods, or services.   Barriers to entry have been blown to bits as it is no longer just major corporations with vast resources who can run and scale global businesses.


This shift in power transcends right down to an employee, creating a networked and socially empowered workforce that can operate and execute change outside the borders of traditional organizational silos. More so, it can execute change organically, without seeking permission from senior management or other authorities that we would typically find in old power models.





Most progressive organizations today understand and are gravitating towards new power to shape their cultures.   Organizations such as Google, Netflix, Zappos and Hubspot realize that despite their size and innovative products, their business models can be easily replicated.   What cannot be “copied and pasted” are their cultures.   Having culture built on the premise of new power opens up many avenues that diminish the “us vs. them” divide and instead focuses on collective purpose and how “WE” move forward.



It is clear from Korn Ferry’s work and most other sources that both CEOs and employees indeed want and need change.We won’t get there through traditional top-down programs, slogans or PR campaigns.   We will get there through valuing collaboration and co-creation, where everyone, managers and employees, own the problem and the solution.


  • Fantastic insight Reuven, thanks for sharing. The IBM/Uber example is interesting. What if it was upper management that shared the idea on their social platform first? "Hey, we're thinking it might be a good idea to have all employees refrain from using Uber on business trips, what do you think?" This also reminds me of a recent example at SAP when Bill McDermott wanted to get feedback from employees about enhancing the company logo. Everyone was able to weigh in and it altered the outcome in a positive way.