{"podcast":{"title":"The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving","slug":"the-strategy-skills-podcast-strategy-leadership-critical-thinking-problem-solving-431195","podcast_index_feed_id":431195,"rss_url":"https://strategyskills.libsyn.com/rss","website_url":"https://www.firmsconsulting.com","image_url":"https://static.libsyn.com/p/assets/d/b/b/8/dbb87cad4c06da1d/SS_art_4.png","author":"Kris Safarova for Firmsconsulting.com","episode_count":500,"summary":"CEOs and business leaders, management consulting senior partners, ground-breaking professors, thought-provoking writers and journalists, record-setting athletes and coaches, and award-winning actors and celebrities discuss the key issues facing the business world and broader society. Get free access to our newsletter, Monday Morning at 8 am, along with sample episodes from our training programs on www.strategytraining.com. Go to https://www.firmsconsulting.com/promo.","last_synced_at":"2026-07-15T22:22:19.528722+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-strategy-skills-podcast-strategy-leadership-critical-thinking-problem-solving-431195"},"episode":{"title":"634: BCG's Julia Dhar on Why 70% of Major Change Efforts Fail","slug":"634-bcg-s-julia-dhar-on-why-70-of-major-change-efforts-fail","published_at":"2026-03-09T11:00:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-strategy-skills-podcast-strategy-leadership-critical-thinking-problem-solving-431195/634-bcg-s-julia-dhar-on-why-70-of-major-change-efforts-fail","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-strategy-skills-podcast-strategy-leadership-critical-thinking-problem-solving-431195","url":"https://strategyskills.libsyn.com/634-bcgs-julia-dhar-on-why-70-of-major-change-efforts-fail","audio_url":"https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/strategyskills/634_FSS_Julia_Dhar_e_lio_mio_192kb_COMPRESSED.mp3?dest-id=291244","summary":"Julia Dhar, Managing Director at Boston Consulting Group and founder of the firm's Behavioral Science Lab, joins us to discuss why most organizational change efforts fail and what leaders can do differently. Drawing on behavioral science and her work advising major organizations, she explains why the challenge of change is rarely about strategy alone and more often about human behavior. Julia begins with a simple but powerful discipline used by many successful consultants: asking two questions repeatedly. First, \"what is true about this situation?\" and second, \"what do I believe is true because of my perspective?\" Confusing facts with assumptions is one of the most common causes of poor decisions, especially when leaders begin to treat their own expectations as evidence. The conversation explores why roughly seventy percent of organizational change efforts fail to reach their stated objectives. Julia explains that many leadership teams concentrate on defining the strategy but devote far less attention to the conditions required for people to adopt new behaviors. Successful organizations focus on the \"how\" of change: shaping incentives, clarifying expectations, and reinforcing specific behaviors that make a strategy real in daily work. Several practical insights emerge from the discussion: Leaders often overestimate how comfortable employees are with change. In surveys, executives typically report feeling positive about change, while most employees feel neutral and a meaningful portion feel anxious. Recognizing this gap is the first step toward leading change effectively. Emotions and incentives must be addressed together. People rarely adopt behaviors that conflict with their incentives, and fear or anxiety makes sustained change unlikely. Leaders who want durable chan…","meta_description":"Julia Dhar, Managing Director at Boston Consulting Group and founder of the firm's Behavioral Science Lab, joins us to discuss why most organizational cha…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":3108,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-strategy-skills-podcast-strategy-leadership-critical-thinking-problem-solving-431195/episodes/634-bcg-s-julia-dhar-on-why-70-of-major-change-efforts-fail/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-strategy-skills-podcast-strategy-leadership-critical-thinking-problem-solving-431195/634-bcg-s-julia-dhar-on-why-70-of-major-change-efforts-fail.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}