What's Holding Organizations Back?
The Five Invisible Chains That Keep Companies Trapped in Yesterday's Solutions
In my work with over 400 executives across industries, I've witnessed a troubling pattern: Organizations pour millions into transformation initiatives, hire the best consultants, and announce bold new visions—yet 70% of these efforts fail to create lasting change. After years of studying what separates successful transformations from expensive failures, I've discovered that the biggest barriers aren't technological or financial. They're psychological.
I call them the Five Chains of Change—invisible forces that keep even the most innovative companies trapped in outdated ways of thinking and operating. Like a climber who can't ascend because they're anchored to the ground, organizations remain stuck not because they lack ambition, but because they haven't identified what's holding them back.
The Weight of Invisible Chains
Picture this: Your team has access to cutting-edge technology, sufficient budget, and clear strategic direction. Yet somehow, momentum stalls. Meetings multiply without meaningful progress. Talented people disengage. Innovation submissions drop from 47 to 8 per month. Sound familiar?
These aren't symptoms of poor leadership or inadequate resources. They're warning signs that one or more of the Five Chains of Change has taken hold. Understanding these chains—and learning to break them—is the difference between transformation that sticks and change that fades.
Chain 1: Clutter and Chaos
Organizational Level
The Problem: Multiple competing priorities and constantly changing directions create a state where everything feels urgent but nothing feels clear.
Picture a brilliant surgeon trying to operate while the lights flicker, music blares, and people keep interrupting with "urgent" requests. Even the most skilled professional will struggle to perform when surrounded by chaos. Organizations experience this same paralysis when they suffer from what I call "tyranny of the urgent"—where reactive firefighting replaces strategic thinking.
Warning Signs:
Teams suffering from "initiative fatigue"
Everything marked as "high priority"
Meetings to plan meetings about reducing meetings
Leaders jumping from crisis to crisis without addressing root causes
The Antidote: Before you can zoom in on solutions, you must zoom out to see patterns in the apparent chaos. The noise isn't interference—it's where the most valuable signals hide.
Chain 2: Comfort with the Status Quo
Individual Level
The Problem: Personal attachment to current systems and processes creates resistance to change, even when people intellectually understand the need for transformation.
This isn't just about being comfortable—it's about ownership. When someone has built the operating manual, established a department, or perfected a workflow, asking them to abandon it feels like asking them to discard part of their professional identity.
Warning Signs:
Frequent use of phrases like "That's not how we do things around here"
Preference for incremental improvements over bold changes
Defending existing processes without examining their current effectiveness
New ideas met with immediate explanations of why they won't work
The Antidote: Transform comfort with status quo into a desire to grow by involving people in evolving the vision rather than mandating it. When teams co-create the future, they become invested in reaching it.
Chain 3: Competing Interests
The third chain of change.
Organizational and Team Levels
The Problem: Different departments optimize for their own metrics while claiming to serve the same organizational mission.
Consider this common scenario: Sales needs to grow 25% year-over-year. Operations must cut costs by 12%. Engineering has to deliver four new product lines. Marketing needs to increase impressions by 40%. Each goal makes sense individually, but together they create impossible trade-offs and internal competition for resources.
Warning Signs:
Siloed thinking and decision-making
Competition for resources between departments
Success in one area causing problems in another
Teams optimizing for their metrics at the expense of overall organizational success
The Antidote: Shift from measuring participation to cultivating contribution. When people understand how their work contributes to collective success rather than just departmental goals, alignment naturally emerges.
Chain 4: Constraints
The Fourth Chain of Change
Organizational Level
The Problem: Limited resources—financial, temporal, human, and capability—create real boundaries, but organizations often respond by spreading resources too thin rather than focusing on what matters most.
Here's the paradox: Most leaders point to insufficient resources as the reason for transformation failure, when high-performing organizations actually succeed by working within their constraints better, not by having unlimited budgets.
Warning Signs:
Constant requests for "more resources" before moving forward
Spreading initiatives across too many priorities
Inability to say no to opportunities
Resources allocated to projects that don't align with core strategy
The Antidote: Transform constraints into competitive advantages. Like Costco limiting their inventory to 4,000 products instead of 260,000, strategic limitations can become your greatest strength.
Chain 5: Apathy
Individual Level
The Fifth Chain of Change
The Problem: Disengagement due to change fatigue, burnout, or frustration with constantly shifting priorities leads to the most dangerous state: people who show up but don't contribute.
When 77% of employees report being disengaged—costing organizations an estimated $7.8 trillion annually—we're looking at an epidemic of disconnection from purpose and meaning.
Warning Signs:
Declining innovation submissions and voluntary contributions
Perfunctory participation in meetings and initiatives
Cynical responses to new announcements
Energy depletion during team gatherings
"Whatever you think is best" replacing engaged discussion
The Antidote: Make mission personal. When people reconnect with their individual "why" and see how it aligns with organizational purpose, transformation becomes not just possible but inevitable.
Breaking Free: The Path Forward
These chains don't operate in isolation—they reinforce each other. Clutter and Chaos can lead to Apathy. Competing Interests can strengthen Comfort with Status Quo. But here's the encouraging truth: breaking even one chain often weakens the others.
The most successful transformations I've witnessed didn't start by trying to solve everything at once. They began by identifying which chain was strongest and focusing there first. Sometimes it meant creating clarity in chaos. Other times it required reconnecting people with purpose. Occasionally, it demanded the courage to eliminate good options in service of great ones.
The key insight? Organizations don't fail to transform because change is hard. They fail because they're trying to move forward while still chained to the past. Once you identify what's holding you back, you can finally break free.
In a world where disruption is inevitable, your success won't be determined by avoiding these chains—it will be defined by how quickly you recognize them and how boldly you choose to break them.
What chains are holding your organization back? Sometimes the most powerful transformation begins with a single honest conversation about what's really keeping you stuck.
Jay Kiew is a change navigation strategist and author of "Change Fluency: 9 Principles to Navigate Uncertainty and Drive Innovation." His groundbreaking Change Fluency model has helped over 400 executives create more than $2 billion in transformation impact. Learn more about breaking the chains of change at www.changefluency.com.
