Why Transformation Programmes Fail — The Inner Game of Organisations

Most transformation programmes fail because the organisation is quietly protecting the very thing you are trying to change.

Cop a copy of my new book NOW: ⁠https://ademolaodewade.com⁠

Turn transformation experience into paid advisory work — Ethos (paid link): ⁠https://agent.askethos.com/refer/nd01w7e2eelw⁠

AI labs pay highly-skilled experts — Mercor (paid link): ⁠https://t.mercor.com/neABb⁠

Build the culture diagnostic deck in minutes — Gamma (paid link): ⁠https://try.gamma.app/f2d4kygskm1h⁠

Zhanna Zhuravleva grew up in Georgia and lived through war as a child, then built her career across Russia, Israel and the UK. She completed two master's degrees — finance and human resources — followed by postgraduate study, and taught finance, management and philosophy at a university in St. Petersburg.

She started in industry as a Kaizen team leader and went on to lead HR and cultural transformation across organisations of more than 1,000 people in 40 countries. She is a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD, has run over 3,000 sessions with leaders, and founded Awake Conscious Play, a school of conscious leadership and leadership transformation.

Early in her career she ran a textbook transformation — designed framework, defined KPIs, strong governance. Six months later almost nothing had changed. The organisation was not governed by its processes; it was governed by informal power. Everything since has been built on that finding.

The 30% improvement in employee satisfaction and 10% reduction in turnover she reports came from no single initiative — a culture hub that put interns and juniors into the improvement process, people partners trained in coaching, and one-to-ones where the feedback actually changed the next decision.

In this episode:

Change fluency — why transformation is not a project with a start date and an end dateThe "inner game": why a fintech's people-first programme stalls because the tension is giving leaders their identity

Three signals that tell you inside a week whether a culture is healthy — quality of disagreement, speed of bad news, and the gap between the official story and the underground story

Diagnosis before prescription: the first 30 days run across Ken Wilber's four quadrants, not a rush to launch programmes

Three types of values — declarative, conscious, unconscious — and which layer actually decides

Why Meta making AI token consumption a performance metric produced engineers burning tokens instead of better decisions

WEF Future of Jobs: 170 million roles created against 92 million displaced — recalibration, not replacement"AI is electricity with intelligence" — why this is an electricity moment rather than an internet one

The 4D Compass for building trust: self, soul, soft, spiritWhy engagement surveys measure compliance — a purple, tribal culture scores high on engagement and low on trust

What she protects if the HR budget is halved: leader development, and a culture diagnosis every year

The mistake founders make at 100 employees — still leading as though there are 20Zhanna's recommendation for every CEO is Spiral Dynamics by Don Beck and Christopher Cowan.

Her conscious leadership programmes — including Lila, the transformational game she has adapted for leaders and runs offline and online — are at: ⁠https://awake-play.co.uk/⁠

Upcoming cohorts: ⁠https://awake-play.co.uk/upcoming⁠

Connect with Zhanna on LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/zhanna-zhuravleva-chartered-fcipd-03a0a622a/⁠

Hosted by Ademola Odewade — chartered accountant, author of Human-Led, AI-Powered Finance (foreword by Professor Dave Ulrich), and Founder of K-Dems Consulting.

The King Dems Podcast. Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights. Ranked in the global top 2% of podcasts.

Diary of a CFO. Finance leadership, unfiltered. Ranked in the global top 2.5% of podcasts.

This description contains paid links. We may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.