Breaking the Cycle: How to Overcome Hidden Barriers That Hinder Change Efforts

I was reflecting on a recent engagement with a team stuck in ongoing strategic discussions, struggling to gain clarity on the real changes they needed to make in order to achieve the outcomes they wanted. After hearing all the back and forth, I realized that the root cause wasn’t a lack of strategy or engagement, but rather hidden barriers that were never openly addressed.

These barriers—perhaps a fear of taking additional risks, uncertainty about leadership’s involvement in the day-to-day, or hesitation to speak up—are what quietly undermined efforts to drive meaningful change conversations. And starting from this point, any action planning meeting would likely suffer the same fate without the right results (again).

So what accounts for this situation and outcome especially when you put skill sets, profiles, and other factors aside?

Fear of Risk and Being the Outlier When a lot of time has gone by with poor results, taking risks feels more dangerous. No one wants to be the person who suggests something radical if it doesn’t work. But holding back only leads to more of the same stagnation. This is common when the environment hasn’t been set up to encourage experimentation, and when leaders (maybe unintentionally) meddle at the wrong times, undermining confidence and making the team overly cautious.

Lack of Open Dialogue or Trust People aren’t sharing their true thoughts (at least in a public multi-stakeholder meeting) because there’s a lack of trust or a fear of upsetting the status quo. If leaders step in unpredictably or don’t create space for genuine feedback, teams start to retreat into safer, surface-level conversations. The result is that the hard truths and creative solutions never make it into the open.

Uncertainty About What to Do Next It’s not always fear—it can also be that the team genuinely doesn’t know what’s wrong or what the next move should be. When the usual strategies fail and the metrics are bad, it’s easy for the team to keep tweaking the same approaches, thinking maybe this time it’ll work. The reality is, they need to step back and ask more fundamental questions about what’s broken and stop trying to fix it with the same tools.

Breaking Through These Barriers

Ok, and then, so what? How do you get out of this? There can be several variables, but these offer, in my opinion anyway, a good start.

Reset Leadership Interference If certain leaders are stepping in at the wrong moments, this needs to be addressed. Leaders should set the vision, but not micromanage the execution. If top leadership meddles in decisions or gives mixed signals, it undermines the team's confidence to take risks. Leadership should clarify where they’ll be hands-off and let the team own the results. Create space where it’s okay to fail, without unnecessary oversight.

Encourage Real Conversations If trust and openness are missing, this must be fixed fast. It starts with leaders creating environments where it’s okay to bring up bad news, wild ideas, and dissenting opinions without fear of backlash. I’ve seen situations improve when leaders openly ask for “unpopular opinions” or designate time specifically for challenging the norms. Let team members say what’s really on their mind without worrying about reputational risk.

Start with Small, Bold Moves The longer metrics are bad, the harder it feels to take bold steps—but this is when they’re most necessary. Don’t wait for perfect, large-scale solutions. Instead, push for smaller, targeted experiments that feel bold but manageable. This gets the team out of its comfort zone without the overwhelming pressure of having to hit home runs immediately.

Takeaways

Ultimately, to get unstuck, leadership and teams must create space for bold moves by stepping back and allowing everyone to own their decisions, even when the situation is unclear, or the conversations that matter, and have impact, aren’t happening. Encourage real, uncomfortable conversations that get to the heart of the issue. Push for action, but in small, fast experiments that remove the fear of massive failure. When teams feel they can speak up, take risks, and drive change without interference, that’s when progress starts to happen.