Is the Change Message Clear?

Organizations are running faster than their people can keep up, and talent development professionals can be the first line of defense. The Grossman Group's 2025 enterprise change study, The Change Tipping Point, finds that most employees can absorb only one to two major changes per year, yet more than half of leaders expect to roll out three or more during the next two years.

That mismatch—combined with the pace and complexity of technology-driven shifts, such as artificial intelligence—is shrinking the margin for error and amplifying the human costs of businesses poorly managing transformation.

AI drives one-third of today's strategic transformations, the Grossman Group found. And while 83 percent of leaders say AI will be a major factor in future change, 23 percent of leaders name it the hardest change to implement. That may ultimately become a problem for organizations. According to the report, one-quarter of major change efforts fail. Companies that push past employees' capacity for change without proper change management tactics often experience employee burnout, confusion, workload spikes, and turnover.

The problem is fixable, though. The report notes that effective communication can triple the odds of change success. Conversely, organizations are 5.5 times more likely to fail without visible leadership or if messaging is weak. That said, researchers found that some leaders reframe the communication issue as a lack of understanding on the employees' end.

In "US Employee Engagement Sinks to 10-Year Low," Gallup reveals that employees with low clarity of expectations and poor manager connection are less likely to adopt new ways of working, making even well-intentioned initiatives fragile at best.

The Change Tipping Point advises companies to treat change as a disciplined capability through sequencing, role-based learning, leader coaching, and communication design that earns commitment. "Organizations are already at a tipping point where the volume of change is more than employees can realistically absorb," researchers explain in the report. "That makes it essential for leaders and communicators to work in lockstep, planning and sequencing change while communicating in ways that bring employees along."