A few years ago, a CEO I worked with announced a bold new way of working. Business cases, they declared, would now be just one page. No lengthy slide decks. No drowning in detail. The rule was clear: a single page, written to a set template.
The intent was good. Distil your thinking. Make your message compelling. Focus on the audience, not the author. As Blaise Pascal put it, “I would have written a shorter letter, but I didn’t have the time.” Writing something short takes more critical thinking than writing something long.
But that’s not how it played out.
The first few attempts just about held to the rule. One page, maybe 1.5. Then came the slow drift. 1.5 pages became two, became five, until the typical PowerPoint decks were back in circulation. Employees rolled their eyes. Leaders looked the other way. What began as a purposeful shift soon became another entry in the long list of “initiatives that never stuck.”
Why? Because the reason behind the change was never properly explained. Leaders weren’t brought on board. No one, not even the CEO, held people accountable when the rules were bent. The moment a 1.5-page case was accepted, the precedent was set.
This is what performative change looks like.
On the surface, it signals progress. Beneath the surface, little changes. The practice may look like a response to inefficiency or a nod to innovation, but without clarity, buy-in, and consistency, the change is all gesture and no shift.
Performative change is common in organisations of all sizes. I’ve even caught myself doing it. Agreeing to a changing the structure of a leadership group, knowing it would make no difference to the hierarchy, but staying silent rather than voicing concern or offering an alternative. In that moment, performative was also manipulative.
I’ve also consulted with organisations who realised too late that their initiative was a performative band-aid on a deeper problem, and the temporary solution only made it worse. A new policy here, a revised template there, a new team name to hide failures of the past. Leaders’ eager to be seen as responsive rolled out practices without tackling the real work: culture, behaviours, accountability. I know of one team who’d wanted to create greater autonomy, so wrote a policy for who makes decisions and how. They then wondered why decisions kept being pushed up the chain; not seeing that the deeper problem wasn’t lack of policy, it was lack of empowerment.
Real transformation doesn’t start with the template, the name change, or the policy. It starts with the “why.” It’s reinforced when leaders role-model the behaviour, when they hold the line, when they celebrate the people who make it work. It’s sustained when employees feel the change makes their work better, not just different.
Real change is hard. Performative change is easy, but it carries a cost: cynicism, disengagement, wasted effort. Once people have seen one initiative come and go, they’re less likely to trust the next.
So next time you’re tempted to roll out a new process or announce a bold new solution, pause. Ask yourself:
Have we explained why this matters?
Are leaders modelling the shift?
Are we ready to hold the line when habits slip?
What deeper behaviours or cultural patterns need to shift alongside the process?
The question isn’t whether people can follow a new template. The question is whether the organisation is ready to change at all.