Surface or Substance? How to Evaluate Change Expertise

The frequently repeated claim that 70% of organizational change initiatives fail is not supported by valid and reliable empirical evidence (Hughes, 2011).

That matters for more than academic accuracy.

It illustrates a larger challenge organizations face when hiring someone to help lead change:

How do you distinguish the appearance of expertise from the depth behind it?

• A polished résumé can look impressive
• So can decades of experience
• Certifications
• Familiar methodologies
• Global client lists
• Research terminology
• Compelling transformation stories

But these are signals of expertise. They do not necessarily tell you what that expertise is built on.

The more important questions are:

How does this person think?

• Do they question assumptions?
• Do they distinguish research from industry folklore?
• Can they explain the foundations of their practice?
• Do they understand the limitations of their preferred methodology?
• Can they connect what they know to the realities of your organization?
• And can their knowledge withstand scrutiny beyond the first polished answer?

That is the difference between surface and substance.

Why I Use the Term Scholar-Practitioner

Throughout this article, I use the term scholar-practitioner intentionally.

A scholar-practitioner does more than apply a methodology. Scholar-practitioners bridge research and practice, grounding their work in research and theory while using what they learn through practice to inform and advance knowledge (Short & Shindell, 2009).

Wasserman and Kram (2009) similarly describe the scholar-practitioner role as involving both the generation of knowledge and the improvement of practice.

That distinction matters in organizational change.

For complex organizational transformations, organizations should not have to choose between a scholar and a practitioner.

They should look for a scholar-practitioner.

A practitioner without scholarly depth may know how to execute familiar activities but lack the research literacy needed to challenge assumptions, critically evaluate evidence, or recognize when accepted industry practices rest on weak foundations.

A scholar without meaningful practice may understand research and theory exceptionally well but have limited experience navigating the ambiguity, politics, competing priorities, operational constraints, and human realities of organizational transformation.

Strong scholarly preparation also goes beyond occasionally reading research articles. Advanced graduate education develops the ability to critically evaluate evidence, understand research methodology, engage competing theories, and recognize methodological limitations. Doctoral preparation goes further by developing the capability not only to consume existing knowledge, but also to design rigorous research and contribute original knowledge to the field.

Organizations are complex human systems. Change practitioners routinely make recommendations that can affect jobs, structures, technologies, decision rights, employee experiences, business performance, and significant financial investments.

• A certification can teach a methodology.
• Experience can build judgment.
• Research can challenge assumptions.
• Theory can help explain what we observe.
• Practice can reveal what happens when those theories and assumptions encounter reality.

The real value is in the integration.

The strongest scholar-practitioners can move between these worlds using scholarship to question assumptions and evaluate evidence, while drawing on practical experience to understand context, exercise judgment, and adapt when reality does not unfold as a model or theory predicts.

Substance comes from understanding how and when to integrate them.

Ideally, organizations should seek a scholar-practitioner to help lead complex organizational transformations—someone who can integrate scholarly depth, relevant business experience, and meaningful applied practice.

It is also time to raise the standard for the change profession itself. Organizations expect rigor when selecting experts for other consequential work; they would not ask just anyone to audit their financial statements or provide specialized professional advice. Yet organizational transformations can affect thousands of employees, reshape operating models, alter careers, and involve millions—or billions—of dollars, while the expertise of those leading the people side of that work may receive far less scrutiny.

The questions that follow are a starting point for changing that standard: moving the field toward more informed evaluation of what genuine change expertise should look like and helping organizations distinguish surface from substance before entrusting someone with a transformation.

So, before hiring someone to help lead an organizational transformation, consider asking these five questions.

1. “Research Shows That 70% of Organizational Changes Fail. Why Do You Think the Failure Rate Remains So High?”

Yes.

Ask it exactly that way.

Then listen carefully.

You are not primarily testing whether the scholar-practitioner knows why change initiatives struggle.

You are testing whether they question the premise of the question itself.

Hughes (2011) critically examined five published instances in which a 70% organizational-change failure rate was asserted and found no valid and reliable empirical evidence supporting the claim.

More than a decade later, Hughes (2022) continued to challenge the persistent assumption that organizational change inherently fails and called for greater attention to the contextual, processual, and dynamic nature of evaluating change.

There is another complication.

Jones et al., (2019) analyzed 200 organizational change case studies and found that the majority of the initiatives studied were considered successful.

That does not mean we should simply replace one universal statistic with another.

It demonstrates the problem with the premise.

• What counts as change?
• What counts as success?
• Who decides?
• At what point in time?
• According to which measures?

A technology implementation could meet its launch date while employees develop extensive workarounds six months later.

An organizational redesign could achieve its financial targets while damaging retention.

A transformation considered successful by executives may be experienced very differently by frontline employees.

There may be no meaningful universal organizational-change failure rate at all.

🔴 Surface Signals

Be cautious if the change practitioner:

• immediately accepts 70% as established fact
• begins explaining the statistic without examining its validity
• says “research shows” without being able to identify the underlying research details
• attributes failure largely to “employee resistance”
• demonstrates little curiosity about how change success or failure is actually measured

A fluent explanation of an unsupported premise can sound knowledgeable.

That is precisely why this question is useful.

🟢 Substance Signals

Listen for a scholar-practitioner who:

• distinguishes empirical evidence from a claim that has simply been repeated frequently
• questions the 70% statistic rather than automatically accepting it
• recognizes the difficulty of establishing a universal failure rate
• asks how success and failure are being defined
• considers context, timing, measurement, and stakeholder perspective

The change practitioner does not need to recite Hughes (2011) from memory. However, familiarity with the scholarship and the ability to explain why the claim is methodologically problematic can be a strong signal of a well-developed scholar-practitioner.

That balance matters.

Practice without scholarship can remain at the surface. A practitioner may have years of experience and know how to execute familiar activities, yet still rely on assumptions, inherited methods, or industry claims that have never been critically examined.

Scholarship also requires more than occasionally reading research articles. Deep scholarly preparation is typically developed through advanced graduate education, where practitioners learn to critically evaluate evidence, understand research methodology, engage competing theories, recognize methodological limitations, and distinguish correlation, interpretation, and causation. Doctoral education goes further by preparing scholars not only to consume knowledge, but to design rigorous research and contribute original knowledge to the field.

Scholarship without practice has limitations too. Someone may understand theories, research methods, and the literature exceptionally well while having little experience navigating the ambiguity, politics, competing priorities, operational constraints, and human realities of an actual organizational transformation.

Relevant business and organizational experience matters as well. Expertise developed in another discipline can bring valuable perspectives to organizational work, but disciplinary expertise does not automatically translate into the ability to advise complex businesses. Just as deep academic knowledge of medicine would not, by itself, prepare someone to treat patients without meaningful clinical experience, expertise in human behavior does not, by itself, substitute for experience in understanding how organizations actually operate.

Effective organizational advisors need exposure to the realities of business—strategy, operations, financial pressures, governance, customers, leadership dynamics, competing priorities, and the consequences of decisions inside real organizations.

The strongest scholar-practitioners therefore bring more than scholarship and more than practice alone. They integrate deep scholarly preparation, relevant business experience, and meaningful applied organizational practice.

Organizational change requires both.

The strongest scholar-practitioners can move between the two worlds: they use scholarship to question assumptions, evaluate evidence, and inform decisions, while using practical experience to understand context, exercise judgment, and adapt when reality does not unfold as a model or theory predicts.

That intersection of scholarship and practice is where substance becomes easier to distinguish from surface.

The substance is in the thinking.

Do they recognize that a remarkably precise universal statistic deserves scrutiny before they begin explaining it?

This is not a trivia question.

You are observing how easily an assumption becomes accepted industry folklore and how easily that folklore is then treated as fact.

2. “What Relevant Education, Certifications, Experience, and Evidence Qualify You to Lead This Transformation?”

This is not about accumulating letters after someone’s name.

It is about understanding what sits underneath them.

A change practitioner might have:

• an academic degree
• one or more professional certifications
• decades of consulting experience
• internal organizational leadership experience
• expertise in a particular industry
• experience with a particular type of transformation
• knowledge of organizational or behavioral research
• a proprietary methodology

All can be valuable.

But they represent different forms of preparation.

A certification may demonstrate exposure to a particular methodology.

A graduate degree may demonstrate sustained study within a discipline and, depending on the program, research capability.

Years of experience may demonstrate repeated application and judgment developed through practice.

None automatically establishes mastery.

And 20 years of experience does not necessarily mean 20 years of increasing depth.

It can also mean one approach repeated for 20 years.

🔴 Surface Signals

Be cautious when:

• years of experience substitute for explaining what the person actually did
• impressive titles are offered without clear responsibilities
• certifications are presented as proof of expertise rather than one component of preparation
• proprietary benchmark data are presented as universal scientific evidence
• “research shows” is repeatedly used without identifiable research
• personal experience is generalized into universal truth

The résumé may be impressive.

The question is whether the expertise beneath it is equally impressive.

🟢 Substance Signals

Look for a change practitioner who can clearly explain:

• what they studied and how it relates to the work
• what their certifications actually required to obtain them
• what types of organizational transformations they have worked on
• the scope and complexity of those transformations
• whether they advised, supported, managed, or held direct accountability
• how they have continued developing their knowledge
• the research or theories that inform their practice
• where professional experience influences their judgment
• which elements of their approach are evidence-informed, practice-based, or proprietary

Strong practitioners should be comfortable distinguishing:

“Research suggests…”

from

“In my experience…”

from

“Our methodology assumes…”

Those are different claims.

Substance requires knowing the difference.

3. “Walk Me Through an Organizational Transformation You Personally Helped Lead. What Did You Own, What Worked, What Failed, and What Would You Do Differently?”

The words personally and own matter.

There is an important difference between participating in a transformation and being accountable for part of its outcome.

Change professionals frequently use words such as:

• Led
• Partnered
• Supported
• Managed
• Advised

Those words can describe enormously different levels of responsibility.

Someone may have “led communications” by developing a communication calendar.

Another practitioner may have been responsible for the entire people transformation strategy across multiple countries.

Both can accurately say they “led change.”

The label is the surface.

Accountability reveals the substance.

There is also an important difference between advising an organization about change and being responsible for living with the consequences of those recommendations.

External consultants can bring valuable breadth across organizations and industries.

Internal leaders develop another form of knowledge.

• They see what happens after go-live
• Employees respond in unexpected ways
• Workarounds emerge
• Measures move in the wrong direction
• Leaders change priorities
• What looked good on paper encounters operational reality

Ideally, a change practitioner has enough depth to understand both worlds, having lived with the consequences of implemented transformations rather than merely advising from the sidelines.

🔴 Surface Signals

Be cautious if:

• every transformation described was successful
• the story consists primarily of standard change-management activities
• personal accountability remains vague
• success is defined through communications delivered, training completed, workshops conducted, or go-live dates alone
• the practitioner cannot identify a recommendation that failed or required modification
• the story ends when the project launches
• lessons learned sound polished but contain little genuine reflection

A completed communication plan is a deliverable.

Training completion is a measure of participation.

A go-live date is a milestone.

None, by itself, establishes that a transformation succeeded.

🟢 Substance Signals

Look for someone who can:

• clearly identify their personal accountability
• describe the business and workforce context
• explain what actually changed
• connect activities to outcomes rather than simply deliverables
• discuss what did not go according to plan
• explain how new information changed their approach
• describe what happened after implementation
• identify what they would do differently today

Strong practitioners generally have imperfect stories.

That is a good thing.

Real organizational transformations are rarely perfectly linear.

Someone willing and able to examine their own decisions critically may reveal far more depth than someone presenting a flawless catalog of successes.

4. “How Does Your Approach Meaningfully Differ From Conventional Change Methods and When Would You NOT Use It?”

This is where marketing language can easily be mistaken for differentiation.

Ask almost any change consultancy how its approach differs and you may hear:

• People-centered
• Agile
• Data-driven
• Customized
• Human-centered
• Evidence-based
• Collaborative
• Research-informed

All sound appealing.

None tells you very much by itself.

Those are descriptions.

The substantive question is:

What do you actually do differently?

And equally important:

Where does your approach stop working?

• Every model contains assumptions
• Every methodology has boundaries
• Every framework simplifies reality to make it usable

Organizations, however, are not interchangeable.

The same intervention can produce very different outcomes depending on organizational history, leadership, culture, workforce, technology, incentives, power structures, business conditions, and the nature of the transformation itself.

🔴 Surface Signals

Be cautious when you hear:

• “This works everywhere.”
• “Our methodology is best practice.”
• attractive labels without a meaningful explanation of what actually happens differently
• familiar change activities repackaged with proprietary terminology
• rigid adherence to predetermined stages despite contradictory information
• no clear explanation of when the methodology would be inappropriate
• complex terminology that cannot be explained in plain language

Changing the vocabulary does not necessarily mean the underlying practice changed.

🟢 Substance Signals

Strong scholar-practitioners should be able to:

• describe what they actually do differently, not merely how they brand it
• connect specific elements of their approach to real research, theory, or practice-based evidence
• explain assumptions underlying their methodology
• identify limitations in the approach
• describe circumstances in which another method may work better
• adapt tools to organizational context rather than forcing the organization into the tool
• integrate ideas from multiple disciplines
• explain when they would modify or abandon part of their original plan

The goal is not to find someone with no methodology.

It is to find someone who understands their methodology well enough not to become trapped by it.

Substance includes knowing not only why an approach may work.

It includes knowing when it may not.

5. “When This Engagement Ends, What Should Our Organization Be Able to Do Without You?”

This question changes the conversation.

External expertise can be enormously valuable.

But the goal of an engagement should not be permanent organizational dependence.

A successful transformation should leave behind more than:

• presentations
• stakeholder maps
• communication plans
• training materials
• templates
• assessment results
• dashboards

Those are visible artifacts.

They are the surface of the engagement.

What should remain underneath is capability.

• The people closest to the work should understand more than they did when the engagement began
• Leaders should be better equipped to recognize transformation risks
• Employees should have a greater ability to identify friction and surface emerging issues
• Cross-functional teams should be able to evaluate what is working and what is not
• The organization should retain knowledge, judgment, tools, and confidence

Ideally, it should be better prepared to lead the next transformation.

🔴 Surface Signals

Be cautious if success appears to require:

• continued dependence on the practitioner
• proprietary processes that internal employees never fully understand
• repeated external intervention for similar problems
• knowledge remaining primarily with the consulting team
• little deliberate transfer of capability to employees or leaders
• the practitioner remaining the permanent center of expertise

An organization can receive an impressive set of deliverables and remain dependent on the people who produced them.

🟢 Substance Signals

Look for a practitioner who talks about transferring:

• knowledge
• decision-making capability
• tools and methods
• critical thinking
• problem-solving skills
• measurement capability
• internal ownership
• confidence to question and adapt
• the ability to apply learning to future transformations
• proprietary techniques and insights

External experts may still be useful in the future.

But their future value should increasingly come from the new expertise they bring, not because the organization was never equipped to operate without them.

A good engagement should solve more than the immediate problem.

It should leave the organization stronger.

Dependence should not be the deliverable.

Surface Can Look a Lot Like Substance

This is what makes evaluating expertise difficult.

• Credentials can be legitimate
• Transformation stories can be true
• References can be excellent
• Academic terminology can be used correctly
• Research can genuinely inform someone’s work

None of those things is inherently superficial.

The problem is assuming that the presence of the signal proves the depth behind it.

A change practitioner with substantial expertise may have impressive credentials.

• But they should also be able to explain what those credentials contributed.

They may have 20 years of experience.

• But they should be able to demonstrate what those 20 years taught them.

They may use research.

• But they should understand what the research actually establishes and what it does not. They should be able to distinguish rigorous empirical evidence from benchmarks, internal data, industry surveys, opinion, and marketing claims. A proprietary benchmark or industry survey may offer useful insight, but it should not automatically be treated as equivalent to peer-reviewed research or as evidence of causation.

They may have developed a methodology.

• But they should understand its differentiators, underlying assumptions, and limitations.

They may tell impressive stories.

• But they should also be willing to talk about failure, uncertainty, and decisions they would make differently today.

That is where the distinction begins to emerge.

The Real Test Is Not the First Answer

• Every surface answer deserves another question
• But so does every substantive one
• Because sophisticated language can be learned
• Credentials can be exaggerated
• Transformation stories can be rehearsed
• References can be carefully selected
• Academic terminology can be borrowed
• Research articles can be memorized

Even the “correct” response to the 70% question can eventually become another rehearsed answer.

So these five questions should not become another checklist.

They should start a deeper conversation.

• Ask for specifics
• Ask how they know
• Ask where the evidence ends
• Ask what failed
• Ask about limitations
• Ask what would make them change their mind

And notice what happens when the conversation moves beyond the prepared answer.

• Does the practitioner become defensive?
• Or curious?
• Do they retreat into methodology?
• Or think with you?
• Do they need to have every answer immediately?
• Or can they acknowledge uncertainty and explain how they would investigate it?

Surface-level expertise can perform well for several minutes.

Substance is much harder to sustain without actually possessing it.

So, Surface or Substance?

• Certifications can matter
• Degrees can matter
• Experience matters
• Methodologies can matter
• Research matters

But none should be evaluated in isolation.

The strongest scholar-practitioners work at the intersection of knowledge and practice.

• They understand theory without assuming reality will neatly follow it
• They value experience without mistaking experience for universal evidence
• They use methodologies without becoming controlled by them
• They distinguish empirical research, theory, professional experience, proprietary data, and personal interpretation
• They question assumptions including their own

And they should leave an organization more capable because they were there, not more dependent after they leave.

That is substance.

And it is a very different standard for evaluating change expertise.

Ready to Go Beyond the First Answer?

This article gives you the five questions and the surface and substance signals to listen for.

The free Change Practitioner Interview & Vetting Guide takes the evaluation further.

Designed for organizations evaluating change expertise and scholar-practitioners preparing to demonstrate the depth behind their own practice, the guide includes probing follow-up questions, deeper watchouts, and verification points to help you move beyond polished or rehearsed responses and examine what sits beneath them.

Get In Touch and type code “Free Guide” in the Message Section to get your FREE Change Practitioner Interview & Vetting Guide

Because ultimately:

Do not simply ask whether a change practitioner sounds knowledgeable.

Flip the Script.

Ask whether their knowledge can survive the next question.

References

Hughes, M. (2011). Do 70 percent of all organizational change initiatives really fail? Journal of Change Management, 11(4), 451–464. https://doi.org/10.1080/14697017.2011.630506

Hughes, M. (2022). Reflections: How studying organizational change lost its way. Journal of Change Management, 22(1), 8–25. https://doi.org/10.1080/14697017.2022.2030980

Jones, J., Firth, J., Hannibal, C., & Ogunseyin, M. (2019). Factors contributing to organizational change success or failure: A qualitative meta-analysis of 200 reflective case studies. In R. G. Hamlin, A. D. Ellinger, & J. Jones (Eds.), Evidence-based initiatives for organizational change and development (pp. 155–178). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-6155-2.ch008

Short, D. C., & Shindell, T. J. (2009). Defining HRD scholar-practitioners. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 11(4), 472–485. https://doi.org/10.1177/1523422309342225

Wasserman, I. C., & Kram, K. E. (2009). Enacting the scholar-practitioner role: An exploration of narratives. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 45(1), 12–38. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886308327238