Getting Change Really Right: Rethinking Evidence-Based Change
For all our sophistication in organisational theory, the failure rate of change efforts remains remarkably consistent. It's not for lack of frameworks. Nor is it a lack of intent. The real issue is subtler and far more systemic.
The paper Successful Organizational Change: Integrating the Management Practice and Scholarly Literatures by Stouten, Rousseau and De Cremer represents a meaningful step forward. It offers a well-articulated synthesis of ten evidence-based principles, distilled from both practitioner models and empirical research. It's pragmatic, structured, and undoubtedly helpful.
But structure is not the same as sufficiency.
The authors make an important contribution, but one that still operates largely within the same paradigm that has quietly limited change work for decades: the assumption that human systems can be shifted primarily through better planning, sequencing, and stakeholder engagement.
That assumption is incomplete.
From the perspective of Constructed Development Theory (CDT) and the Dynamic Intelligence Development System (DIDS), the failure of many change efforts lies not in poor design, but in a more fundamental blind spot: the underdeveloped capacity of individuals and groups to think complexly about the change itself.
In other words, we are often attempting to solve problems of meaning-making with tools designed for behaviour-shaping.
We treat resistance as irrational, when it is often a rational response to cognitive overload.
We interpret failure to adopt new behaviours as a gap in training, when it may be a mismatch between role complexity and thinking capacity.
We assume clarity will create commitment, when in fact the message is being reconstructed through each recipient’s unique cognitive lens.
This article engages constructively with the ten principles outlined by Stouten, Rousseau and De Cremer, not to dismantle their usefulness, but to reframe their application. We offer a developmental critique, grounded in the reality that change is not just a technical or cultural endeavour: it is a cognitive one.
Each principle will be explored through the lens of thinking complexity, intention, and developmental readiness. Where appropriate, we will suggest enhancements rooted in awareness-building, meaning-making, and intentional adaptation. We will highlight not just what the principles say, but what they presuppose about the people who are expected to act on them.
Because getting change
really right isn’t about following better steps.
It’s about cultivating better stewards of complexity.
Principle 1:
Get Facts Regarding the Nature of the Problem
Diagnosis Step #1
Yes, and… ‘facts’ don’t exist in a vacuum. They’re filtered through frames.
The call to begin any change initiative with a careful diagnosis of the problem is not only logical, it’s essential. The authors’ intent here is solid: better outcomes require better inputs, and understanding the current state is a necessary precursor to any effective intervention.
And yet, this principle carries with it an unspoken assumption: that the “facts” of a situation are stable, knowable, and shared.
From a
Constructed Development Theory (CDT) perspective, that’s rarely the case.
Facts are
constructed through perception, interpretation, and meaning-making. Even data-driven diagnostics are subject to framing effects: what gets measured, what gets excluded, and how meaning is made from patterns. As such, the “nature of the problem” isn’t something external to the system, it’s co-created by the people attempting to define it.
Two well-intentioned change leaders can look at the same operational breakdown, engagement score, or revenue dip and arrive at entirely different diagnoses. Not because one is wrong, but because each is seeing through the lens of their current cognitive construction. This is not a defect; it’s a feature of human meaning-making.
The risk is this: when leaders don’t interrogate the lens through which they see the problem, they mistake their interpretation for the problem itself.
Traditional approaches to diagnosis often rely on surveys, KPIs, or narrative interviews. These are valuable tools, but they rarely account for the developmental complexity of the people using them. If the problem is interpreted through a narrow or reactive frame, the resulting change strategy, no matter how sophisticated, may fail to address the system’s actual dynamics.
What’s needed is a deeper kind of diagnosis—one that includes not only:
- The external patterns and surface-level symptoms,
- But also the cognitive architecture of the individuals and teams making sense of those patterns.
This deeper inquiry asks:
“How is this problem being constructed, and by whom?”
It reframes diagnosis from a purely analytical exercise into a developmental opportunity. It invites leaders to become aware of their own meaning-making systems, to examine the limitations of their current perspective, and to increase their capacity to hold multiple, conflicting frames without defaulting to simplistic conclusions.
In CDT terms, the issue is not whether a leader can interpret the data, but whether they can reconstruct their understanding as complexity increases. Without this capacity, diagnosis becomes an act of affirmation bias rather than insight generation.
And so, getting the facts right is not enough. We must get the thinking right about the facts.
We must ask:
- What filters shaped this interpretation?
- What assumptions are being made unconsciously?
- What complexity is being collapsed for the sake of clarity?
Until we engage with the problem at the level of
construction, the solutions we generate risk being overconfident answers to the wrong questions.
Principle 2: Assess and Address the Organisation’s Readiness for Change
Diagnosis Step #2
Yes, and… readiness isn’t a static state, it’s a constructed capacity.
The idea of assessing an organisation’s readiness before initiating change is, on the surface, both logical and risk-reducing. If people aren’t willing or able to engage, then change is unlikely to take root. The principle highlights the importance of gauging support, surfacing resistance, and preparing the ground for implementation. So far, so sensible.
But what often goes unquestioned is the underlying assumption that readiness is something objective, something that can be reliably assessed, scored, or surveyed. In most models, readiness is treated as a set of environmental or emotional conditions: motivation, clarity, psychological safety, leadership alignment.
From a Constructed Development Theory (CDT) perspective, this framing is incomplete.
Readiness is not just about how change is communicated or supported, it's about
how it is cognitively constructed by the people involved. In practice, this means readiness cannot be separated from the
thinking patterns of those expected to deliver or absorb the change. It's not just an attitudinal state; it's a developmental one.
When a leader experiences a wave of resistance, they may conclude that the team isn’t ready. But CDT would ask: ready for what, exactly? To do something different? Or to think differently about what’s being asked of them?
Many so-called readiness assessments treat change as something happening to people, rather than something being constructed by them. The result is often superficial compliance mistaken for buy-in, or enthusiasm mistaken for capacity.
Readiness can’t be reduced to enthusiasm. It must include an honest assessment of whether individuals have the cognitive range to interpret, adapt to, and enact the change meaningfully.
When developmental capacity is missing or mismatched, people fall into overwhelm. They regress to old behaviours, cling to certainty, or disengage entirely. And in those moments, the standard change management response is often to “improve communication” or “re-engage stakeholders”, missing the fact that
the system is experiencing a developmental overload, not a communication failure.
A richer, more accurate view of readiness would include:
- Mapping the cognitive complexity of the change against the developmental stage of those affected.
- Exploring how individuals and teams are currently constructing their relationship to uncertainty, ambiguity, and control.
- Surfacing friction between personal meaning-making and the structural demands of the change.
This approach doesn’t replace traditional readiness work. It repositions it. Readiness becomes less about managing sentiment and more about cultivating cognitive fitness.
The developmental leader of change asks:
“What internal capacities need to be strengthened for this change to be viable, and how might we begin doing that before we move forward?”
In this light, readiness is not a precondition. It is a preparation: a deliberate investment in developing the awareness, flexibility, and interpretive range that enables people to step into the unknown not just willingly, but intentionally.
Princple 3. Implement Evidence-Based Change Interventions
Yes, and… evidence is only as useful as the mind interpreting it.
The principle of using evidence-based interventions in change management reflects a welcome maturation in the field. For too long, organisations have leaned on charisma, anecdote, or borrowed wisdom from bestseller business books. The call to ground interventions in research, tested models, and data is entirely appropriate.
But there’s a deeper question we must ask: What kind of evidence counts, and who decides?
From a Constructed Development Theory (CDT) perspective, every act of interpretation is filtered through cognitive architecture. Evidence is never just received, it is constructed, reframed, and often unconsciously shaped to reinforce existing mental models. A change leader might proudly apply an evidence-based framework, while simultaneously limiting its effectiveness through the unexamined assumptions they bring to its implementation.
This is not a problem of intention. It is a problem of
capacity.
No intervention, however robust in design, can succeed if it outstrips the developmental range of the people applying it. A feedback loop may be implemented, but if those participating in it lack the ability to hold multiple perspectives or reflect on their own thinking, it quickly becomes performative. A new strategic framework may be deployed, but if the team lacks cognitive flexibility, it becomes a checklist rather than a catalyst.
In CDT terms, what matters is not simply what you do, but how you construct meaning around what you’re doing. This means the efficacy of any intervention is shaped less by the evidence behind it and more by the internal complexity of those enacting it.
So we must ask:
“Are we implementing evidence-based practices—or repeating familiar scripts under the banner of legitimacy?”
An intervention only becomes transformative when those delivering it can:
- Reflect critically on their own assumptions,
- Engage dynamically with context,
- And shift their responses as the system shifts.
This is where many well-researched, well-funded change programmes falter. Not because the content is wrong, but because the container is underdeveloped. People default to habitual responses. Unconscious bias shapes how data is collected and interpreted. Well-meaning leaders confuse the feeling of certainty with having clarity and continue to over-engineer processes when what is stepping back and reflecting is what is actually required.
Evidence-based change, when implemented developmentally, becomes something more powerful than instruction. It becomes practice in meaning-making. It invites us to use data not just to validate our plans, but to evolve the lens through which we see the system we’re trying to influence.
So yes, use the evidence. But also ask:
- Who is interpreting it?
- What assumptions are shaping their sense-making?
- And what developmental support do they need to apply it with agility, awareness, and intention?
Principle 4: Develop Effective Change Leadership Throughout the Organisation
Yes, and… effectiveness is developmental, not definitional.
Few would dispute the importance of leadership in driving successful change. The fourth principle, developing effective change leadership throughout the organisation, is one of the more widely endorsed across both practice and theory. But the clarity of that endorsement often obscures a more fundamental question: Effective according to whom, and in what context?
The prevailing models of leadership development tend to focus on capability frameworks, behavioural competencies, and, if we’re being generous, emotional intelligence. While all of these have value, they operate largely at the horizontal level: adding new skills or refining observable behaviours.
But
Constructed Development Theory (CDT) makes the case that true leadership effectiveness, especially in the context of change, is not just a question of
what a leader does. It’s a function of
how they think.
Leadership, in this view, is not a fixed identity or set of traits. It is a dynamic, moment-by-moment construction, an emergent response to the complexity of the system, shaped by a leader’s ability to make meaning in context.
This distinction matters.
Because without an understanding of the
thinking structures that underpin behaviour, leadership development risks becoming cosmetic, reliant on surface-level behaviours that collapse under pressure. The leader may know what to say, but default to defensiveness in the moment. They may talk agility, but enact rigidity. They may espouse inclusion, but unconsciously filter out perspectives that challenge their frame.
From a developmental perspective, the critical question isn’t: “Are our leaders showing the right behaviours?”
It’s: “Do they have the developmental range to adapt their thinking when the system demands it?”
The distinction is subtle, but it is the difference between conformity to a model and growth in complexity.
Supporting leaders to develop in this way means helping them:
- Become aware of their own meaning-making filters.
- Expand their capacity to hold competing perspectives without collapsing into either/or thinking.
- Increase their ability to stay reflective in situations that typically trigger reactivity.
In practice, this is the work of vertical development: shifting how leaders see themselves, their role, and the systems they operate within.
A distributed model of change leadership, then, shouldn’t just cascade competencies. It should foster developmental coherence across teams, ensuring that leadership capacity doesn’t bottleneck at the top, or fracture across silos.
Because when complexity rises, and it will, it’s not the most experienced leader who prevails, it’s the one who can think most complexly about what’s actually happening.
Principle 5: Develop and Communicate a Compelling Change Vision
Yes, and… vision is not just projected—it’s constructed and reconstructed.
This principle sits comfortably within the canon of change management: leaders are advised to articulate a clear, energising vision that orients the organisation toward a desirable future. In theory, this creates alignment, motivation, and purpose. In practice, it’s often more complicated, and more fragile.
Constructed Development Theory (CDT) prompts us to re-examine what a “vision” actually is. It is not a beacon of objective truth. It is a shared construction, formed through language, interpretation, and individual meaning-making. What the leader intends when they craft a vision and what others hear, internalise, or resist may be wildly divergent.
The challenge is not that people lack vision. It’s that they lack a shared construction of meaning about what the vision represents. And unless that construction is continually revisited, it becomes brittle.
In environments of volatility or rapid change, even well-crafted visions quickly lose traction—not because they’re poorly designed, but because they’re being interpreted through outdated or incomplete cognitive frames. A compelling vision, if not reflexively engaged with, calcifies into doctrine. It stops inspiring and starts constraining.
More dangerously, organisations may fall into the trap of believing that clarity of communication ensures clarity of understanding. But in CDT terms, clarity doesn’t come from transmission, it comes from co-construction.
That means the real work of vision is not in announcing it, but in
holding the space for it to evolve.
A developmentally aware leader of change doesn’t just ask: “How do I make this vision compelling?”
They ask: “How are people making sense of this vision, and what meaning-making capacity do they need in order to connect with it deeply, adaptively, and creatively?”
This is especially important across different levels of the organisation, where cognitive complexity and interpretive range vary. The same message can land as inspiration, confusion, or threat, depending on the developmental frame of the audience.
So while vision matters, what matters more is how the vision is:
- Interpreted through individual and team-level constructions.
- Challenged and refined through dialogue, not just presentation.
- Used as a mirror for the organisation’s current developmental stage, not merely as a destination.
And when vision becomes less about direction and more about
invitation into collective construction, it becomes resilient, capable of surviving the very change it’s designed to lead.
Principle 6: Work with Social Networks and Tap Their Influence
Yes, and… influence is filtered through the constructions that define belonging.
This principle acknowledges a critical truth: change rarely happens in straight lines. It moves through networks: through informal influencers, trust-based interactions, and the often invisible webs of social permission that govern behaviour.
What’s less often acknowledged is that these networks don’t just transmit messages. They transmit meaning. And meaning, as Constructed Development Theory (CDT) reminds us, is not neutral.
Within any social network, influence is shaped by the prevailing norms of interpretation: the shared constructions of “how we do things here,” “what matters,” and “who gets to decide.” These aren’t just cultural artefacts. They are cognitive frameworks. And without developmentally informed attention, these frameworks tend to
reinforce sameness, not adaptability.
So while working through social networks can accelerate uptake, it can just as easily entrench resistance, particularly when those networks are unconsciously aligned around protecting existing meaning-making structures.
In practical terms, this means:
- The most connected person in a network may also be the most committed to preserving the status quo.
- Influence may travel quickly, but not deeply, replicating surface-level engagement rather than genuine cognitive shift.
- Efforts to engage networks may unintentionally amplify groupthink rather than innovation.
A CDT-informed view asks us to go deeper: “What constructions are dominant within these networks, and how do they shape what is seen as acceptable, safe, or ‘normal’?”
It also invites us to notice who is excluded from influence. Not just by hierarchy, but by developmental framing. Those who interpret the world differently are often marginalised, not because of a lack of contribution, but because their framing challenges the unspoken consensus.
So, working with networks isn’t just about identifying connectors. It’s about understanding:
- What thinking styles are dominant within the group.
- What perspectives are being left out.
- And how the group’s current cognitive structure may be shaping the limits of change itself.
Rather than treating social networks as fixed pipelines of influence, we might instead treat them as sites of developmental possibility: places where meaning-making can be surfaced, questioned, and evolved.
Because when networks shift not just in composition but in cognitive capacity, they become engines not just for adoption, but for transformation.
Principle 7: Use Enabling Practices to Support Implementation
Yes, and… enabling is only effective when it supports intentional adaptation, not unconscious repetition.
This principle rightly highlights the importance of embedding change through supportive mechanisms: routines, rituals, technologies, and structures that make new behaviours easier to adopt and sustain. Enabling practices can reduce friction, signal priority, and provide psychological safety during uncertain transitions.
But enabling practices are not neutral. They shape and are shaped by the cognitive frames through which people interpret them. From a
Constructed Development Theory (CDT) perspective, any practice, however well designed, can be interpreted in ways that reinforce old constructions rather than support new ones.
When a system is under stress or ambiguity is high, people instinctively look for anchors. Enabling practices often serve as those anchors, but instead of fostering genuine change, they risk becoming containers for habitual behaviour dressed up as innovation.
A reflection journal becomes a compliance task.
A stand-up meeting becomes a box-ticking routine.
A learning platform becomes a place to collect points, not expand perspective.
The practice itself isn’t the issue, it’s the awareness and intention behind it.
In CDT terms, implementation that relies on enabling practices alone risks mistaking
behavioural surface change for
developmental transformation. A new behaviour repeated without reflection does not constitute growth, it constitutes
repetition without evolution.
To be truly enabling, practices must:
- Support individuals to become aware of their own cognitive habits.
- Create space for reflection, not just action.
- Encourage sense-making and adaptation as the context evolves.
In this view, the role of enabling practices is less about enforcing consistency and more about scaffolding development, providing just enough structure to support new ways of thinking, while inviting the person to eventually outgrow the structure itself.
The developmental leader of change asks: “What internal shifts are we inviting through this practice, and how might it need to evolve as the person or system matures?”
Because in a complex, adaptive system, practices that were once enabling can easily become limiting. Unless they’re regularly revisited, reinterpreted, and reconstructed, they risk becoming relics: symbols of a change that once mattered, but no longer moves.
Principle 8: Promote Micro-Processes and Experimentation
Yes, and… experimentation only produces insight when there is developmental capacity to integrate what emerges.
Encouraging micro-processes and experimentation is one of the more progressive principles in the list. It reflects a shift away from rigid top-down change plans toward more adaptive, emergent approaches, ones that acknowledge uncertainty, allow for iteration, and value learning over control.
But experimentation, for all its promise, doesn’t guarantee progress.
From a Constructed Development Theory (CDT) perspective, what makes experimentation valuable isn’t the act itself, it’s how people make meaning from what they experience. Micro-interventions can generate data, but without the cognitive flexibility to interpret that data meaningfully, what’s learned may be shallow, misread, or even ignored.
Put differently: a team can run dozens of pilots without ever challenging its underlying assumptions. When this happens, experimentation becomes activity:
a flurry of motion without transformation.
To experiment well in a complex system, individuals must be able to:
- Hold ambiguity without collapsing it into simplistic conclusions.
- Reflect on failure without defaulting to blame or self-protection.
- Change their own thinking in response to what they learn, not just their tactics.
These are not behavioural skills. They are developmental capabilities. Without them, feedback loops become echo chambers, and iterative processes become exercises in revalidating existing biases.
The danger is subtle but real: When the underlying mindset remains fixed, experimentation is not exploration. It is rationalised confirmation.
So while promoting micro-processes and experimentation is directionally sound, it only delivers its promise when paired with:
- Intentional support for sense-making - the internal processing of what experimentation reveals.
- Developmentally appropriate reflection - so that people are not just adjusting their methods, but evolving their understanding of the system.
- A psychological environment that values inquiry over performance, and learning over certainty.
Change leaders must therefore ask: “Are we building a culture of experimentation, or just creating space for superficial iteration?”
True experimentation invites us not just to test hypotheses, but to test the limits of our own construction—to challenge how we see problems, what outcomes we value, and how we understand cause and effect in a nonlinear world.
When experimentation is held developmentally, it becomes more than agile. It becomes
transformational.
Principle 9: Assess Change Progress and Outcomes Over Time
Yes, and… what we choose to measure reveals what we are ready to see.
This principle echoes a core tenet of effective change work: that what gets measured matters. Tracking progress and outcomes over time is essential not only for accountability, but for course correction, celebration, and learning.
Yet from a Constructed Development Theory (CDT) perspective, this principle surfaces a deeper and often unexamined truth: every act of measurement is also an act of meaning-making. What we track, and how we interpret it, is never neutral.
Standard metrics tend to favour what is observable and quantifiable: behavioural compliance, output, adoption rates, cost savings. But developmental change, change in how people
think, make meaning, and respond to complexity, rarely shows up on these dashboards. It unfolds more subtly, and often at first, more messily.
As a result, we risk prematurely declaring success (because people are “doing the thing”) or failure (because outcomes didn’t move on schedule), without ever examining whether anything truly shifted in the way people construct their understanding of the work, themselves, or the system.
We end up asking:
- “Did behaviour change?” Rather than:
- “Did thinking change in a way that makes sustainable behaviour more likely?”
A CDT-informed approach reframes assessment as a developmental discipline, asking: “What are we really trying to grow here, and are we capable of perceiving it yet?”
This invites us to look not just for movement, but for maturation:
- Are individuals engaging with more complexity over time?
- Are teams reflecting with greater depth and nuance?
- Are patterns of meaning-making becoming more adaptive, more fluid, more intentional?
This kind of assessment is not incompatible with traditional metrics, it complements them. But it requires us to:
- Build capacity for developmentally appropriate observation.
- Introduce qualitative reflection into how progress is discussed and understood.
- Create feedback systems that notice not just what changed, but how people relate to change itself.
Because what gets measured may matter. But what gets understood is what determines whether change becomes part of the culture, or just another phase in the cycle of reinvention.
Principle 10: Institutionalise the Change to Sustain Its Effectiveness
Yes, and… what becomes embedded can also become entangled.
The final principle reflects a familiar aspiration: to ensure that change, once achieved, becomes self-sustaining. It’s a well-intentioned response to the common pattern of regression, of slipping back into old habits once attention drifts or leadership moves on.
And yet, from a Constructed Development Theory (CDT) perspective, institutionalisation is a double-edged sword.
To embed change is to
stabilise it, but stability can easily tip into rigidity. Practices and processes that were once emergent responses to evolving contexts become codified. New language becomes jargon. Principles become checklists. The change, once lived, becomes performed.
In time, the system may be left enacting the form of transformation, while the function, the underlying intentionality, has faded.
This isn’t a failure of implementation. It’s a failure of reflection. Or more precisely, a failure to embed reflection into the institution itself.
When we ask how to institutionalise change, CDT would redirect us to ask: “How do we institutionalise the capacity to keep reconstructing our understanding of what’s needed, and why?”
That is: not to embed the change itself, but to embed the conditions that keep change alive. Conditions that support:
- Ongoing self-awareness at the individual and collective level.
- Dialogue that surfaces unconscious drift back toward old constructions.
- A culture of inquiry, where assumptions are regularly tested, not just defended.
This requires more than new policies or permanent change offices. It requires an intentional cultural foundation—one where development is not an initiative, but an organising principle.
In this kind of environment, the goal is not simply to preserve what was achieved, but to remain perpetually developmentally ready. Here, change is not institutionalised as an endpoint—but as a posture, a capability, and a shared responsibility.
So yes, embed. Stabilise. Institutionalise.
But don’t ask, “How do we make the change stick?”
Ask, “How do we ensure the system keeps noticing when it needs to evolve again?”
Because in a world defined by volatility, institutionalising change means building a culture that is capable of
outgrowing even the change it just completed.
From Principles to Practice: Supporting the Developmental Turn
The ten principles reviewed here offer a thoughtful synthesis of research and practice. They reflect a maturing field and an earnest attempt to bring greater structure and credibility to the work of change. But as we’ve explored, even the best frameworks can fall short if they fail to engage with the internal architectures of meaning-making, identity, and cognitive capacity.
From a Constructed Development Theory (CDT) and Dynamic Intelligence Development System (DIDS) perspective, successful change is not simply a matter of doing better things, it’s about developing better thinkers. The kind of change that lasts is the kind that invites people to reconstruct not just their actions, but their understanding of what matters, how they relate to it, and who they are in the face of uncertainty.
To support this, tools exist that are specifically designed not to drive change from the outside in, but to enable it from the inside out:
- Tools that reveal whether a leader’s thinking complexity matches the demands of the role or the ambiguity of the challenge, ensuring readiness is more than sentiment.
- Tools that uncover hidden friction within leadership teams, where differences in thinking style can quietly sabotage strategic alignment and momentum.
- Tools that provide structured coaching based not on symptoms or surface behaviours, but on developing intentional awareness of how thought is constructed, and how it can be consciously re-constructed.
- And cultural frameworks that don’t just shape behaviour, but embed reflection, development, and meaning-making as daily practices, ensuring that growth doesn’t depend on crisis or charisma, but becomes part of the organisation’s cognitive infrastructure.
These aren’t “interventions” in the traditional sense. They’re invitations to see more, think differently, and lead with deeper awareness.
When paired with principles like those outlined in the Stouten et al. framework, they don't replace. They extend. They deepen. They reveal what was previously hidden, not to complicate, but to ensure that what is implemented can endure.
Because change, at its best, is not an initiative.
It is a developmental act.
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