Everyone Says People Come First in Transformation. So Why Don’t They?
The 7 Percent, episode 2 | Host: Andy Haley, CEO of Sullivan & Stanley | Guest: Jane Bates, founder of The Koru Collective | Released 3 November 2026 | 27 minutes
🎧 Spotify | 🎧 Apple Podcasts | ▶️ YouTube
Most organisations say people come first in transformation, yet the human side of change is often the part programmes attend to least. In episode three of The 7 Percent, Jane Bates, founder of The Koru Collective, draws on 35 years of leading people through change, beginning with 18 years at Tesco, to explain where the gap opens up. Her answer starts with leaders: the beliefs they hold about a change shape how they communicate it, and few programme plans leave room to examine them.
Key takeaways
- Leaders’ beliefs about a change shape how they communicate it, so exec teams should examine their own assumptions before treating culture as the problem.
- In a change-weary organisation, leaders need to acknowledge that weariness before a new programme begins.
- People working out of obligation or survival spend their energy managing how they appear. Formal and informal listening posts help leaders hear what is going on.
- The same technology can feel like an opportunity to one person and a threat to another’s identity, so leaders need to speak to both reactions.
- Early adopters can test new tools and then coach colleagues who feel less certain.
Why don’t organisations put people first in transformation?
Organisations rarely put people first because the work involved, from leaders’ self-awareness to understanding what people fear, is so easily left out of a programme plan. Jane hears leaders say that change is about people more often than she used to, but she is less sure many of them understand yet what that asks of them. Helping someone through change means understanding their fears and motivations, and that depends on them understanding themselves first. Most change journeys focus on moving people from A to B. The part that gets missed is self-awareness, in leaders and in their teams.
It is also why Sullivan & Stanley’s Intelligent Enterprise framework now gives human intelligence the most weight, as technology becomes cheaper and more widely available.
Why do leaders’ own beliefs hold transformation back?
Leaders’ beliefs about a change seep into every message their people hear, and are often the source of the resistance to change they blame on culture. A leadership team that sees a change as simple will struggle to bring a sceptical workforce with it.
When exec boards tell Jane the culture is the problem, she often asks to see the communication they have put out about the change. She hears lines like “this is so simple, why can’t they just grasp the opportunity?” Those beliefs find their way into the narrative. People who were promised before that a change would make things better, and saw no improvement, hear leaders asking everyone else to change without doing anything differently themselves.
Her advice is for leadership teams to explore the beliefs they hold about the change and about the current culture, then look for proof points across the organisation. That work rarely appears in a programme plan, which often moves straight from appointing a programme director to asking for KPIs.
What are the signs of change fatigue?
Signs of change fatigue include people who feel exhausted even when their workload has not grown, and people working out of obligation or survival. Jane also looks for lingering frustration over past changes that promised improvement and never delivered it, and for low engagement or psychological safety scores. If an organisation is change weary, leaders need to acknowledge that weariness before a new programme starts.
Drawing on her work on motivational states at Tesco, she explains that when people cannot be honest about how a change is affecting them, much of their energy goes on showing up the way they believe is expected. That is why so much of the exhaustion people feel during change is emotional and mental.
She recommends listening posts, formal and informal, so that concerns come to the surface early. Where engagement is low and psychological safety is reported as low, she would address those first, before any technology investment.
How should organisations introduce AI to their people?
Organisations should be clear about what each AI tool is for and open about which roles it will change, speaking to the people who see a threat as well as those who see an opportunity.
As organisations put more machines to work alongside people, Jane believes the human side of change becomes more important. She remembers putting the first computerised tills into Tesco superstores. Then as now, one piece of technology can mean opportunity to one person and a threat to another, in the same room. A cashier who has been the best in the store for 20 years may take her identity from that expertise, and technologists now need to speak to her concerns as well as to what the kit does.
Where roles will change, Jane says leaders should say so and attend to what comes next for the people affected, because silence does not stop people worrying. As she puts it: “Nobody speaks about that bit. Don’t mention that bit, and nobody will ask. Nonsense, utter nonsense. People are worrying about it.” Early adopters can then test new tools in an innovation lab and help coach colleagues who feel less certain.
Who is Jane Bates?
Jane Bates is the founder of The Koru Collective, a conscious leadership and organisational development consultancy. She has 35 years’ experience in people change, beginning with 18 years at Tesco, where she worked in management and leadership development after studying psychology. She went on to roles at Bupa and the Co-op.
More from episode 3
Jane and Andy go on to discuss how the pandemic and the rapid arrival of new technology collided in people’s working lives, and why she believes the two are rarely treated as connected. The episode ends with Andy asking what excites her most about the future of work.
About The 7 Percent
The 7 Percent is a podcast from Sullivan & Stanley, hosted by CEO Andy Haley. In each episode, Andy speaks with a senior leader who has been accountable for delivering major transformation about the decisions that shaped their programme. Season one runs to nine episodes, released fortnightly from 20th October 2026 to 2nd February 2027.