When boards drive change from the outside in – chasing numbers, issuing mandates, restructuring for efficiency – they often miss the point.
Behavioural change isn’t a spreadsheet exercise. It’s a people problem, and too many organisations get that wrong.
And when boards get it wrong, the costs are steep: reputational damage, cultural backlash, and change programmes that stall before they start.
Financial performance is closely tied to culture and how well you trust your people. A McKinsey study found that companies that invested heavily in culture and skills during change initiatives saw their total shareholder returns increase by 10% after the transformation.
Taking care of your employees’ mindsets, behaviours, and skills pays off. Another study showed that companies that linked leadership incentives to transformation goals (signalling that new behaviours matter) saw shareholder returns increase fivefold compared to companies that didn’t.
The point? Lasting change is about people, not just processes or numbers.
And here’s the good news: behaviour can be changed.
You just need to understand how.
From Top-Down to Inside-Out
Having a positive impact is possible – but never guaranteed. In our experience, organisations that succeed view change as an opportunity to enable, not enforce.
This is easier when you’re working for a purpose-led organisation – greening energy networks, enabling safer payments, creating a fairer energy market, giving community pharmacies access to affordable finance. But even then, success isn’t automatic.
When Havas decided to work with Shell, they put profit before purpose.
When BrewDog and HelloFresh deprioritised workers’ rights, they lost sight of what made them credible – and trust, once lost, is hard to win back.
The organisations that transform performance are those that recognise: purpose and profit are intrinsically linked. And when they’re not, they shift the system to create alignment.
That starts by recognising a simple truth from behavioural science:
People don’t resist change. They resist being changed.
How the COM-B model can help boards get it right: the COM-B model, developed by Susan Michie and her team at UCL, offers a better lens. It starts not with goals, but with people:
For behaviour to change, people need Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation.
Boards that focus only on performance targets miss two-thirds of the equation.
Capability: More Than Skills
People can’t adopt new behaviours if they don’t have the psychological or practical capability to do so. That means:
If you’ve restructured but haven’t retrained, you haven’t changed behaviour. You’ve just moved chairs.
Opportunity: The Invisible Hand
Even the most motivated, skilled employee can’t act if the system gets in the way.
Boards must create the environment where change can take root. That means investing in culture, not just comms. Empowering middle managers, not just C-suite evangelists. Listening to the front line - not just consultants.
Because behaviour is social. And change happens when the system nudges everyone in the right direction.
Motivation: The Missing Metric
Most boards track outcomes. Few measure what motivates the people delivering them.
Yet motivation is the engine of change. And it’s deeply emotional.
People change when they feel:
This is where values-led leadership comes in. If your board isn’t living the change, no one else will. As we’ve seen with brands like BrewDog and BP, misaligned signals erode trust faster than any press release can rebuild it.
The Cost of Getting It Wrong
Recent high-profile failures - from PwC Australia to Credit Suisse - show what happens when boards ignore the behavioural layer.
Think about it for a moment.
Short-term gains were chased. Cultural cracks were papered over. And when those systems were stressed, they snapped.
Behaviour isn’t a bolt-on to strategy. It is the strategy.
Where Boards Slip Up
Even well-meaning boards derail change. Here’s how:
In short: if your board can’t model the behavioural shift you’re asking of the business, it’s not transformation. It’s theatre.
What Boards Can Do Differently
If the story in the market doesn’t match the results on the ground, something’s out of step. Leadership teams need to close that gap - simplifying the message, backing it with evidence, and taking the whole organisation with them.
That means more than just adjusting the messaging, but building a deep understanding of why things are out of step, and then moving from research, to creative, to measurable outcomes.
Want transformation to stick? Start here:
Use frameworks like COM-B to identify what’s actually stopping change - before launching top-down initiatives.
Reward the behaviours you want. Not just the outcomes.
Make it safe to speak up, experiment, and fail forward. This is where innovation - and culture - grows.
People follow meaning, not memos. Use narrative to show what the change feels like, not just what it’s for.
Change That Starts From the Inside Out
Boards are the architects of system change. But architecture alone isn’t enough. Behaviour is what makes the system live or die.
If you want transformation to last, stop asking: How do we drive change?
Start asking: What do people need to make change possible?
Because until you do that, change will remain a possibility, never a reality.