Michael J. Lopez’s National Study Reveals Why Many Workplace Transformations Fail, and Exactly How to Fix It

What if the reason your company’s transformation keeps stalling has nothing to do with your strategy, your technology, or your goals?

That is the question Michael J. López has spent two decades trying to answer. His conclusion is a direct challenge to a multi-billion-dollar industry: the way most organizations manage change ignores what science says about how humans actually adapt.

López is the founder of Michael J. López Consulting, a former Big Four managing director, and the author of CHANGE: Six Science-Backed Strategies to Transform Your Brain, Body, and Behavior. He began his career as an Intelligence Officer before holding senior roles at Booz Allen Hamilton, EY, and KPMG. What he kept observing was the same gap: the process was followed, the training was delivered, and the organization remained unchanged.

So he designed a study to find out why.

The Finding That Changes the Entire Conversation

Rather than studying how organizations manage change, López asked how employees actually experience it. In his national workforce study, López reports surveying 1,000 American workers, from individual contributors to senior executives, ages 18 to 60, broken out by generation, gender, and role.

The headline finding is stark. According to his research, there is zero overlap between the top five resources organizations provide during change and the top five resources workers say they need to adapt (López, Rethinking Change Management, 2025). Organizations invest in communication plans, structured training, and project rollouts. Workers describe needing time to process what is changing, genuine support from immediate leaders, and the space to adjust gradually.

Companies are not failing because they are not trying. They are failing because they are solving the wrong problem.The study further indicates that a significant share of workers perceive a gap between leadership expectations and employees’ day-to-day experiences (López, Rethinking Change Management, 2025). It also suggests that many employees view leading change as an essential leadership skill, though fewer believe it is currently treated as such within their organizations. Most importantly, only a small proportion report that their companies are actively preparing them for AI-driven disruption - a critical gap given the current AI landscape.

The Hidden Fault Line Inside Most Organizations

One of the more revealing dimensions of the research is a generational fault line in how people learn. Gen X leaders, who occupy most decision-making roles in corporate America, prefer structured, classroom-style approaches built on memorization. Millennials and Gen Z learn through experimentation, iteration, and repetition. They did not learn to use a smartphone, for example, by reading a manual. And yet, many organizations continue designing change strategies in a “common denominator” fashion, where every employee gets the same experience. The study results suggest this approach is really only ensuring that no one fully gets what they need.

There is also a structural problem baked into how change is purchased. Organizations treat transformation as a cost to control rather than a capability to build, pressuring consultants to promise faster, simpler results than real adaptation requires. Programs look strong on paper and collapse in practice.

The Most Empowering Thing the Data Shows

The research carries a hopeful message. Employees are not resistant to change by nature. They simply are not being given what they need. Their answers, when asked, are consistent with decades of behavioral science: experimentation, repetition, and genuine support from those closest to them. Not mass communication cascades or one-time training events.

The gap between what organizations deliver and what workers need is not a talent problem or a culture problem. It is a design problem. As López puts it, as long as companies employ people, there is a responsibility not just to help them face disruption, but to help them thrive in it.

His forthcoming report, Rethinking Change Management, releases the full study findings. His book, CHANGE: Six Science-Backed Strategies to Transform Your Brain, Body, and Behavior, gives leaders the framework to act. Both are at michaeljlopez.coach.

The path forward is clearer than most organizations realize. The only thing required is that organizations listen to the needs of their employees and rethink their approach to change.