Leadership teams blame the framework. The OKRs weren’t specific enough. The KPIs weren’t measurable. The cascading of objectives was too rigid. The quarterly reviews were too infrequent.
They’re solving the wrong problem.
In 1964, David Gleicher created a formula that still predicts — with uncomfortable accuracy — whether organisational change will succeed or stall. Richard Beckhard and Reuben Harris refined it. Kathleen Dannemiller reframed the formula with a focus on overcoming resistance to change. This formula poses that three factors must be present for meaningful organisational change to take hold.
Patrick Lencioni recently brought it back into circulation with a practical threshold that makes it actionable.
The Change Equation
C = D × V × F > R
- C = Change
- D = Dissatisfaction with how things are today
- V = Vision of what’s possible
- F = First concrete steps (what you do Monday morning)
- R = Resistance to change
Multiplication matters. If any factor is zero, the whole equation collapses. Resistance wins by default.
Lencioni adds a useful heuristic: the left side needs to be at least twice the resistance. Not equal. Not slightly greater. Decisively greater.
Does it actually work?
For sixty years, consultants used this formula without rigorous validation. That changed recently.
In 2018, researchers Čudanov, Tornjanski, and Jaško tested the equation across fourteen industries in South-East Europe. Their findings confirmed the core premise: successful change occurs when D × V × F exceeds resistance. When any variable drops too low, change stalls — regardless of how good the strategy looks on paper.
A 2025 doctoral study at Bowling Green State University went further, developing a measurement instrument based on Gleicher’s formula and testing it with over 400 organisational change participants. The results provided empirical support for predicting change outcomes.
The contested “70% of change initiatives fail” statistic gets thrown around constantly. The honest answer: that specific number lacks solid evidence. But even conservative research puts clear success at only 34%, with another 16% delivering mixed results. The majority of change efforts underperform — that part isn’t disputed.
What I’ve seen in practice
I’ve coached leadership teams through OKR implementations for years. The pattern is consistent.
One client — a Group of manufacturing companies I’ve worked with for three years — succeeded with OKRs not because they picked the right framework, but because their leadership team had already done the hard work. They were genuinely dissatisfied with the status quo (and honest about it). They had a shared vision that every executive could articulate in concrete terms. And they knew what had to change in the first two weeks — not just the first quarter.
Compare that to the teams that struggle. They roll out OKRs with enthusiasm, run the workshops, set up the tracking tools. Six months later, the framework is collecting dust and everybody is back to their “Business as usual” activities. When I dig into what happened, it’s always the same: they skipped the equation.
- The CEO felt the pain, but the leadership team didn’t share it
- The vision existed in a strategy deck but not in people’s heads
- Nobody knew what actually changed for them, or needed to change on Monday morning
No framework or transformation aspiration survives that.
Why this matters for strategy execution
Every OKR rollout, every strategic planning cycle, every transformation initiative is a change management initiative. And most leadership teams skip straight to the mechanics, the framework and tools without checking whether the equation is tilted in their favour.
They assume dissatisfaction is shared across the board. It isn’t. The pain the CEO feels isn’t the pain the middle manager feels.
They assume the vision is clear to everybody. It isn’t. “Be the market leader in customer experience” isn’t a vision — it’s a slogan.
They assume people know what to do once the big announcement was made. They don’t. Ambitious Q1 objectives without clear first steps create anxiety, not momentum.
The candid truth
When your strategic execution efforts aren’t landing, you don’t have an OKR problem.
You have a leadership alignment problem wearing an execution disguise.
- Dissatisfaction requires honest conversation about what’s broken — which means conflict
- Vision requires genuine agreement on where you’re going — which means debate
- First steps require prioritisation and trade-offs — which means being selective and saying no
Dysfunctional leadership teams can’t do any of this. They’re too busy keeping the artificial peace, protecting their turf, and avoiding the conversations and conflicts that would actually move the equation.
Before your next planning cycle, score yourself
- Dissatisfaction (1-10): Is the pain of staying the same visceral and shared across the leadership team — not just the CEO?
- Vision (1-10): Can every executive describe the future state in concrete terms that would sound the same?
- First steps (1-10): Does everyone know exactly what changes for them in the first two weeks?
- Resistance (1-10): How entrenched are the habits, politics, and structural barriers working against this change?
Now do the math. Is (D + V + F) at least double R?
If not, don’t start the OKR rollout. Start the leadership work.
Over to you:
Think about a change initiative that stalled in your organisation. Which variable was missing — dissatisfaction, vision, or first steps?
If you want to see Lencioni explain the equation himself, here’s the video that prompted this piece.
