Failure is the Norm
On Work & Change
On Work & Change
The projects, challenges, and lessons I’ve picked up along the way in work.
Failure is the Norm
I remember sitting in a war room after weeks of the same thing. Half the team was combing through defects. The other half was scrambling to document stuff on a system that had already gone live. Leadership was in another room debating what to prioritize to put the fires out. Nobody was celebrating. Nobody felt like we had “won.”
And yet, weeks later, the project was marked as a success.
That’s the irony of program management. On paper, the numbers say two-thirds of projects fail. But the ones that don’t “fail” often don’t quite succeed either. Something is always sacrificed—schedule, cost, or value. Sometimes all three.
So we shrug and say, “Well, at least we’re better off than we were.”
But that seems odd.
Because it is.
Where OCM Was Supposed to Help
Organizational Change Management was supposed to be the answer. The discipline that would stop projects from collapsing under their own weight by focusing on the people side of change.
And there are plenty of frameworks and toolkits out there. But here’s the hard truth: none of them work if the people living through the change aren’t actually bought in. A Gantt chart won’t fix that. A sprint retrospective won’t fix that.
What does?
One of the levers is Communication.
Not just more of it. Better of it.
Communication as a Lever of Change
Too many projects mistake awareness for readiness. A PowerPoint presentation might create awareness.
It doesn’t build competency.
It doesn’t show someone how their daily work will shift, or why the bumps in the road are worth enduring.
Sponsors and champions have to be trained too. Not to memorize technical details, but to tell the story: current → transition → future. They’re the ones who can warm their teams to the idea of change, prepare them for turbulence, and explain the “why” in ways a corporate email never will.
And the communication itself has to be data-driven.
Business analysts need to bring users’ voices back into the process, not just a backlog of requests.
Managers need visibility into when the “software factory” starts breaking. When bug intake exceeds bug output.
Leaders need to see trends in adoption, not just checkmarks on a status slide.
Half of every message should be grounded in findings, not fluff.
The Layers of Communication
Think of it like a campaign, not a one-off message.
Emergency communications: sharp and clear, like a severe weather warning.
Tips & tricks: small nudges that make life easier, without piling on workarounds.
Celebrations: calling out users who are adapting and excelling publicly, and often.
Training metrics: not just tracking completion, but acknowledging the reality that only maybe only 50% of people finish on time unless there’s both carrot and stick.
If a change effort lasts more than six months, it deserves a full-blown communication campaign. Otherwise, silence will get filled with rumors, and trust erodes.
Why This Feels Overwhelming
And yes it is overwhelming. Done right, communication in change is an entire job. In a perfect world, every team would have a dedicated OCM lead focused on it full-time. Because if you can’t satisfy your employees with clarity and confidence, you’ll never satisfy your customers.
Over-communicate
If you think you’ve said enough, you usually need to say more.
I’ve found this true in all relationships, work and personal.
It’s something my wife and I have worked through to "close the gap” in assumptions we may have. It’s something my team and I work through to “close the gap” in assumptions we may have.
Yes, I said almost the exact thing twice. The gap in communications exists everywhere in every relationship. If you have stated your assumptions clearly in your communication, you need to change the way you’re communicating.
Closing Thought
Failure may be the norm in program management. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. If we treat communication as a lever of change, not just announcements or updates, but as a strategy, then we can shift the odds.
Not toward perfection, but toward projects that deliver and get adopted. Toward outcomes that are worth more than a shrug and, “Well, at least we’re better off than we were.”
Do the thing. & do it well!
Trev