It's no surprise that 2/3 of all change programmes fail. People generally dislike change, especially if it is out of their control. When our environment changes people feel threatened and no amount of logic and rationale will overcome emotion driven fear.
Understanding how this fear can be alleviated can increase ROI by 28:1. Whether the roots of your transformation are digital, regulatory, procedural, structural... ignore the behavioural and cultural impact at your peril. The winners no longer have the best strategy, they have the best execution strategy.
Change in itself is a threat trigger. Whether leaders understand neuroscience or not, they will still send out neuro signals to their workforce, consciously or unconsciously. Different brains will respond to different leaders in different ways. To maximise the success of your change or transformation, having leaders aware of their behaviours and the effect they have on different types of personality is critical. For example, if a leader understands that a lack of autonomy may activate a ‘threat’ response then the leader can reduce behaviours such as micro-management and increase empowerment to activate ‘reward’ responses. What if the executive team have a collective preference for micro-management? The effect of this is amplified and will seriously derail any change effort.