For years, organisations have poured their energy into the soft side of change: leadership style, culture, communication, motivation. These elements matter enormously but they’re not enough. Executives need a simple and clear model that can assess a change project from its inception to its completion.
Change programs routinely stall because leaders overlook the hard factors that determine whether a project can actually get off the ground.
In 2005, Harvard Business Review published The Hard Side of Change Management by Harold L. Sirkin, Perry Keenan, and Alan Jackson. Their research introduced a simple, powerful framework that remains just as relevant today: DICE.
It’s worth revisiting.
The Four Hard Elements of Change: DICE
The authors identified four measurable components that consistently predict whether a change initiative will succeed or fail:
- Duration — Not how long the project runs, but how frequently it is reviewed. Shorter intervals between reviews dramatically increase success.
- Integrity — The capability, credibility, and composition of the project team.
- Commitment — The visible, aligned support of senior executives (C1) and the managers responsible for implementing change (C2).
- Effort — The additional workload required of employees. The higher the load, the higher the resistance.
These elements give leaders a structured way to assess risk, allocate resources, and intervene early before a project veers off track.
What the Research Revealed
The authors found several recurring assumptions that quietly undermine change efforts:
1. Leaders obsess over project length instead of review cadence.
Long projects aren’t the problem; poor governance is. Their recommendation: review every major change initiative at least every two weeks, regardless of duration. Frequent reviews allow executives to identify gaps and risks early, support the team, and maintain momentum.
2. Project teams are selected for the wrong reasons.
Executives often choose high performers who excel in the current environment not those who thrive in ambiguity or transformation. Successful teams share specific traits:
- strong problem‑solving skills
- a results‑oriented mindset
- comfort with ambiguity
- organisational savvy
- accountability
- motivation without ego
One executive interviewed candidates against these criteria before approving any team member and saw significantly stronger outcomes. They asked other executives about the proposed team members and found that not all were supported when assessed against the criteria. Consulting with others, helps to remove personal bias.
3. Commitment must be visible, aligned, and unwavering.
The authors distinguish between:
- C1: senior executives whose visible support signals importance
- C2: line managers who must implement the change
A memorable insight from the article:
It’s surprising how often something senior executives believe is a good thing is seen by staff as a bad thing, or a message that senior executives think is perfectly clear is misunderstood. That usually happens when senior executives articulate subtly different versions of critical messages. For instance, in one company that applied the DICE framework, scores for a project showed a low degree of staff commitment. It turned out that these employees had become confused, even distrustful, because one senior manager had said, “Layoffs will not occur,” while another had said, “They are not expected to occur.”
Messaging misalignment is deadly. Executives, leaders and project team members must be on the same script. In times of change, staff are assessing if the organisation is serious about the project. If they are change resistant, they are looking for ways to disrupt the project.
Great messaging that is well planned, agreed, consistent and repeated diminished confusion and shows leadership commitment.
Commitment requires consistency, clarity, and courage, especially when decisions are unpopular. This is where executives and sponsors must ensure they are across the communications plan and are fully committed to the messaging, not relying on the communications team and project team but knowing instinctively when to promote the project. Executives need to communicate the messages three times more than they think.
4. Effort is routinely underestimated.
Executives often misjudge the additional workload created by new systems, processes, or learning curves. If employees feel overloaded, resistance is inevitable.
Project teams must calculate the real effort required, including:
- awareness and understanding of the changes
- training and learning time
- temporary slowdowns
- impacts on existing workloads
Sometimes the solution is short‑term resourcing, such as recently retired managers and staff. Sometimes it’s stopping non‑essential work. Without this reality check, even well‑designed projects fail because people simply do not have the time or capacity to be involved in the project work, creating stress and disillusionment with the project goals.
Predicting Success: The DICE Score
The authors developed a scoring system that categorises projects into three zones:
- Win — high likelihood of success
- Worry — moderate risk
- Woe — high risk of failure
Organisations can use DICE scoring across their entire project portfolio to prioritise investment, intervene early, and understand where leadership commitment is lacking.
Why DICE Still Matters
DICE gives busy executives a practical, evidence‑based way to assess change initiatives. It clarifies the leadership behaviours required for success and highlights the structural risks that often go unnoticed.
Most importantly, it provides a shared language for discussing change, one that cuts through opinion, personality, and politics.
As organisations face unprecedented transformation driven by AI, digital acceleration, and shifting workforce expectations, leaders need frameworks that are simple, rigorous, and actionable. DICE is effective because of its simplicity that can be put on a spreadsheet for project and portfolio reviews, used for reporting, and form survey questions to all levels of staff to ascertain the project progress.
If you’d like the original article, go to www.hbrreprints.org for the HBR reprint code R0510G.