The Strategy Skills Podcast: Strategy | Leadership | Critical Thinking | Problem-Solving · FirmsConsulting.com & StrategyTraining.com

634: BCG's Julia Dhar on Why 70% of Major Change Efforts Fail

·52 min·3 clips

Dhar says change efforts usually fail because leaders ignore emotions and incentives.

1. The Strategy Skills Podcast episode with Julia Dhar focuses on why major change efforts fail and how leaders can improve execution. 2. Kris Safarova interviews Julia Dhar, a Harvard-trained behavioral scientist, managing director at Boston Consulting Group, and founder of BCG’s behavioral science lab. 3. The episode asks what change is really for: connecting strategy with human behavior in companies, communities, and daily work. 4. Dhar starts with her career path from Australia to the government of New Zealand, where she worked on data use for public services. 5. She says those public-service problems included helping people get jobs, stay in stable housing, and finish education. 6. Dhar explains that BCG’s behavioral science lab grew from the goal of bringing university research into real-world practice. 7. She describes 17 years at BCG as a place where she could be “needed” and work with kind colleagues and clients. 8. Dhar says BCG’s strategy culture shows up as an appetite for new ideas and new ways of doing something. 9. She gives two questions for leaders: “what is true about this situation” and “what do I believe is true or what do I hope is true.” 10. She warns that confusing facts with hopes makes leaders “very tangled up.” 11. On AI adoption, Dhar says change creates fear and anxiety, and she cites surveys where about a third of people say they feel anxious. 12. She argues that incentives matter because people are not “martyrs to the cause of any given change.” 13. She says leaders need optimism, agency, and clarity when they ask teams to change. 14. Her example of agency includes letting teams choose the order of work, the technology, or the trade-offs between training and resources. 15. Dhar says leaders cannot give certainty about the future, but they can state conviction about why action is better than standing still. 16. She uses old companies that survived the internal combustion engine, the motor car, the internet, and globalization to challenge the story that they cannot change. 17. Dhar says senior executives spend about 4% of their time on leadership and about 60% in meetings. 18. The interview style is direct and practical, with Kris Safarova pressing for examples and Dhar answering in frameworks and work examples. 19. Listeners who manage teams through change, AI adoption, or organizational culture will get the most value. 20. Listeners seeking entertainment or light banter may skip it.

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