#KatieTalks with Howard Krais: Why Change Fails — And What Leaders Still Get Wrong

Most organisations don’t fail at change because the strategy is wrong. They fail because they underestimate the human reality of it.

In this first episode of a two-part conversation, Katie Bennett-Stenton speaks with Howard Krais — a globally experienced leader in organisational change and communication — about why so many transformation efforts fall short, and what leaders continue to misunderstand.

Katie first met Howard at the IABC World Conference in Vancouver, where his perspective on change as a human experience to lead, not a process to manage stood out immediately.

This episode focuses on the diagnosis — where organisations go wrong, and why.

They explore:

• Why people don’t resist change — they resist how change is done to them.
• The disconnect between leadership logic and employee emotion — and why messages are felt before they’re understood.
• What happens when change is communicated as a fait accompli.
• Why up to 70% of change efforts fail — and the commercial cost of getting it wrong.
• The uncomfortable truth about internal communications today: high activity, low strategic impact.

Howard also introduces a critical shift: using AI to remove transactional work, freeing communicators to focus on insight, intelligence and influence.

This is a clear-eyed conversation for leaders who want change to land — not just launch.

About the Guest:

Howard Krais has spent over 30 years working in organisational communication and transformation, including roles at NatWest, EY, GSK and Johnson Matthey. He is co-founder of True Communications and co-author of Leading the Listening Organisation.