SIX BATTERIES OF CHANGE 26 which drain energy. The content of your change program and your change pro- cess varies depending on the energy status of your six batteries. Where or what is the engine of your change? This differs from company to company. Change is inclusive Successful change is never the result of the Herculean efforts of one person. A change leader is crucial, but successful change requires that you build a critical mass of change leaders at all levels in the organization. Top-down change does not generate long-term results – neither does pure bottom-up change. Successful change requires that top managers, middle managers and employees all have a role to play in the change process. Top executives are the sponsors of the change program; they create awareness and set the pace and the direction of the change. Change managers ensure that the program helps to realize the intended goals and control whether projects are delivered in time and within budget constraints. They also manage conflicts, provide feedback, recognize and reward. The champions coach their team members to actively contribute and support the change as indi- vidual projects are delivered. The mythical 70 % It is a commonly held belief, and one frequently reported in literature, that 70 per- cent of all change initiatives fail. We contest this figure, which our research shows is inflated. We developed a measure for overall change success, which included measures of initial performance dips, project timing, whether desired benefits were achieved, and whether change results were sustained. We also examined the impact of the change program on hard performance items, such as financial performance, customer benefits, and operational measures, as well as on soft performance mea- sures, such as employee satisfaction and leadership-related measures.15 Depending on the change effectiveness measure, we see failure rates ranging from 30 to 58 percent, far lower than the traditional 70 percent predictions. Of course, concluding that more than 30 percent of change initiatives therefore succeed is too bold a statement. While more than 30 percent of the initiatives don’t fail, only a minority of firms report overall success. Most firms have ‘low positive’ change success scores. This means that while they may have done well on some of the