In a previous post, we explored how a PESTLE analysis helps organizations move from being reactive to acting strategically by mapping the external forces shaping their environment. That’s encompassed in the Systems pillar of our SHIFT consulting framework, which is all about understanding what’s happening around you.
It’s important to note that you can have the sharpest environmental scan in the world and still watch your change initiative collapse. This is because the forces that actually determine whether change takes hold are found below the surface.
An estimated 60–70% of organizational change initiatives fail. That number has barely budged in decades, despite massive investments in change management tools, methodologies, and consulting. The most common explanations focus on strategy, resourcing, or timeline. But research consistently points to a deeper cause: organizations keep trying to change what’s visible while ignoring the invisible dynamics that really drive behavior.
This is where the second pillar of our SHIFT framework comes in: Human Dynamics.
What Human Dynamics Means
If systems thinking is all about understanding the environment you’re operating in, Human Dynamics describes how you can better understand the people you’re operating with, and, critically, the unwritten rules, relationships, and power structures that shape how those people actually behave.
Human Dynamics asks:
- Who really influences decisions in this organization?
- Where does trust exist, and where is it absent?
- What are the unspoken norms that everyone follows but nobody acknowledges?
- Who feels safe enough to speak up when something isn’t working?
- When change happens, who bears the risk and who gets to feel secure?
These are critical questions that determine whether your change initiative gets genuine buy-in or resistance.
The Organizational Iceberg
Anthropologist Edward T. Hall introduced the iceberg model of culture in the 1970s, and organizational psychologist Edgar Schein later applied similar thinking to workplaces. The metaphor is straightforward: like an iceberg, only about 10% of organizational culture is visible above the surface. The other 90%, the part that actually holds everything together, is submerged.
Above the waterline, you can see things like:
- Organizational charts and reporting structures
- Policies, handbooks, and stated values
- Performance metrics and KPIs
- Meeting cadences and communication channels
- Titles, roles, and decision-making authority
These are the elements leaders tend to focus on when they want to create change. They’re tangible, measurable, and within direct control. But they represent only a fraction of what’s actually shaping how people work.
Below the waterline is where the real action happens; things like:
- Informal power networks: who people actually go to for advice, information, or permission
- Trust patterns: who trusts whom, and who has learned not to trust
- Unspoken norms: what “everyone knows” but nobody says out loud
- Emotional undercurrents: how people feel about the organization, its leadership, and each other
- Shared assumptions: deeply held beliefs about how things work, who matters, and what gets rewarded
- Identity and belonging: who feels like an insider, who feels like a guest, who feels unwelcome or unsafe, and who has simply stopped trying
When organizations try to drive change by only adjusting what’s above the waterline (e.g., restructuring teams, updating policies, rolling out new software), they’re just rearranging the tip of the iceberg– the massive bulk of the iceberg beneath the water ends up staying exactly the same. The visible elements shift, but the underlying behaviors don’t follow. And leaders are left wondering why the new strategy isn’t sticking.
This Is an Equity Issue
Human Dynamics connects directly to equitable change management by focusing on the conditions below the waterline.
Psychological safety, the belief that you can speak up, ask questions, or challenge an idea without fear of punishment or humiliation, is the foundation for navigating change. But as researcher Amy Edmondson and others have emphasized, psychological safety isn’t a blanket that evenly covers everyone on a team. The people who feel least safe are typically those who are already marginalized, underrepresented, or holding less formal power.
Think about what happens during a reorganization. Leadership announces the change, outlines the vision, and asks for feedback. Who actually provides that feedback? Usually it’s the people who already have social capital, established trust with decision-makers, and confidence that their candor won’t cost them. Meanwhile, the people most affected by the change (often those closest to frontline work, those in precarious employment situations, or those who’ve learned through experience that speaking up leads to consequences) stay quiet. Their silence gets interpreted as agreement.
This dynamic means that organizational change, even when well-intentioned, can reproduce and deepen existing inequities. The people with the most power shape the narrative. The people with the least power absorb the disruption.
Understanding Human Dynamics means asking not just “how are people responding to this change?” but “whose experience of this change are we actually hearing, and whose are we missing?”
Why Organizations Skip This Step
Organizations overlook this step for the same reasons they typically skip systems scanning: it feels slow, it’s hard to measure, and it requires a kind of honesty that many leadership teams aren’t practiced at. As we’ve explored before, organizations tend to default to what’s immediate and visible, which means the deeper concerns rarely make it onto the agenda.
Mapping informal networks means acknowledging that the org chart doesn’t reflect how decisions actually get made. Assessing psychological safety means being willing to hear and accept that people may not feel safe, and acknowledging that leadership might be part of the reason why. Examining shared assumptions means questioning the stories the organization tells about itself.
This work is also uncomfortable because it makes power visible. Most organizations prefer to operate as though power is distributed rationally through hierarchy. The reality, which is that influence flows through relationships, trust, reputation, and identity, is messier and harder to manage.
But the cost of skipping this step is clear. Research shows that when change is championed by informal leaders and trusted figures within an organization, success rates improve dramatically. Conversely, when those same informal networks perceive a change as illegitimate or imposed without their input, they become the organizing force for resistance, manifesting as foot-dragging, disengagement, and the slow erosion of momentum.
You can’t manage what you can’t see. And you can’t see below the waterline if you’re only looking at dashboards.
Building Your Human Dynamics Practice
If you want to strengthen your organization’s capacity to understand and work with Human Dynamics:
- Map the informal network. Ask who do people actually go to for advice, information, or reassurance? Who are the connectors or liaisons between teams? Who are the trusted voices that others watch before deciding how to respond to a new initiative? These people may not have senior titles, but they have enormous influence.
- Audit psychological safety honestly. Don’t just ask “do people feel safe?” Ask who feels safe, in what contexts, and what happens when someone raises a concern. Pay attention to patterns: if the same voices dominate every conversation, that’s information.
- Diversify who gets consulted. If your change planning process involves only senior leadership and their direct reports, you’re designing from the tip of the iceberg. Bring in perspectives from across levels, functions, and identities.
- Name the unspoken. Every organization has norms that operate in the background. When you can name these openly, you create the possibility of choosing whether to keep them.
- Connect this to your Systems scan. Your PESTLE analysis tells you what external forces are shaping your environment. Your Human Dynamics assessment tells you how your people are positioned to respond. Together, they give you a realistic picture of your organization’s change readiness.
Try This: A 30-Minute Human Dynamics Scan
You don’t need a full organizational network analysis to start building awareness of what’s below the waterline. Here’s a simple exercise for your leadership team:
- Draw one line on a whiteboard, one for “above the waterline” and one for “below.” In the top section, list the visible elements of how your organization operates: structures, policies, metrics, stated values.
- In the bottom section, brainstorm what’s underneath. What are the unwritten rules? Who are the informal influencers? What do people complain about in private that never gets said in meetings? What assumptions does leadership hold that haven’t been tested?
- Circle the gaps. Where is the biggest disconnect between what’s above and what’s below? Where do your stated values and your lived culture diverge?
- Ask the equity question. For each item below the waterline: who benefits from this norm, and who is disadvantaged by it? Whose experience is reflected in how things work, and whose is invisible?
- Identify one thing to surface. You can’t address everything at once. Pick one below-the-waterline dynamic that is actively shaping how your organization responds to change, and commit to naming it openly.
The goal isn’t to “fix” your culture in 30 minutes. It’s to start developing the habit of looking below the surface and to recognize that the human dynamics in your organization are not obstacles to manage, but essential intelligence for navigating change.
Ready to Go Deeper?
We’re developing comprehensive programming around our SHIFT framework to help leadership teams build integrated capacity for navigating organizational change and complexity. If you want to stay connected as we roll this out, join our newsletter for early access to resources, tools, and program announcements.
And if you’re ready to have a conversation about how SHIFT could support your organization’s current challenges, reach out to us. We’d love to explore what’s possible together.