Summary

Growth multiplies complexity — across channels, roles, decisions. What was clear blurs into mixed signals. Progress comes not from adding incentives or activity, but from a unifying principle: build systems that make the right action the easiest choice. When teams share the same picture, behaviour aligns and adoption accelerates.

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Our Perspective

What this means for leaders navigating growth, change or transformation in their organisation.

The False Promise

Bonuses and big internal announcements feel decisive, yet they rarely change how people actually work. Incentives buy attention for a moment; systems decide what endures. When the legacy route is faster, teams default to it—no malice, just momentum. The result is a gap between stated brand ambitions and everyday choices, visible to customers as inconsistency.

BCG Henderson Institute notes that roughly half of change programmes fall short of their aims, with the failure rate climbing to about 75% when the effort is complex. The lesson is simple: behaviour change is a design challenge. Make the desired action the easiest action, and incentives can become a nudge rather than a crutch.

Design For Ease

Brand behaviours stick when friction is engineered out of the path you want people to take. If the right choice takes five clicks and the old way takes two, the old way wins. Reduce steps. Pre-empt doubt. Put prompts where choices happen—customer relationship management (CRM), ticketing, and slide templates—so the “right” move is obvious at the moment of decision.

Practical levers:

• Pre-set defaults that reflect brand priorities in tools and templates.
• Replace open text with structured fields for clarity and comparability.
• Provide “good” vs “good enough” examples for common tasks.
• Offer short, skill-specific practice sessions tied to real work.

Consequences In The Flow

Signals and stakes must show up where work lives. If governance and budgets are indifferent to brand behaviours, people will be too. Tie approvals and spend to agreed behaviours, and pause initiatives that ignore them. Track a small set of leading signals, not just lagging results, and make them visible weekly so progress compounds.

What to track (sparingly):

• First-call clarity: did we surface the problem and promise early?
• Time-to-value mentions in proposals and updates.
• Evidence that target segments are prioritised in pipeline and resource choices.

Behaviour As Social Signal

People copy what they see. Leaders should model the behaviours daily; peers should recognise specific acts, not generic effort. Create light rituals—open meetings with one concrete example of the behaviour in action; close with one named shout-out. Pair champions with managers to coach in the flow of work. Invite customers to share short stories that reinforce what you value.

In our experience with organisations at pivotal moments, the turning point is when systems, stakes, and stories align; that’s when brand stops being a message and starts being a management tool. Build for that alignment and incentives become supportive, not compensatory—so the brand you promise externally becomes the behaviour your teams choose internally.

Sources:

• Familiar Yet Fatal: 10 Common Pathologies of Failed Change Efforts — BCG Henderson Institute

Further Resources

1. Effective Governance Cadence for Brand Change
2. Transforming Brand Impact with Everyday Behaviour Change
3. Operationalising Brand: How Systems Reduce Rework and Risk

No two brand journeys are the same — connect with us if you’d like to test where your next step might lead. Let’s talk.

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