When I published the first edition of “The Truth About Transformation” in 2022, organizational transformations were already failing at a stubborn 70% rate that had persisted for decades despite increasingly sophisticated technology, better project management methodologies, and unprecedented access to change management frameworks. The premise of that book was simple but uncomfortable: transformation failures aren’t primarily technology problems or strategy problems; they’re human psychology problems that organizations systematically ignore because addressing them requires confronting realities that make leaders uncomfortable.

Three years later, that premise hasn’t changed. What has changed is everything else.

The AI Disruption We Didn’t See Coming

The emergence of generative AI, particularly the release of ChatGPT in late 2022 and the rapid proliferation of large language models that followed, fundamentally altered the transformation landscape in ways that demanded a substantially expanded treatment. Not because AI is inherently more difficult to implement than previous technologies, but because it triggers and intensifies every psychological barrier that already existed in ways we hadn’t anticipated.

Consider what AI represents to the average knowledge worker: a technology that can perform tasks previously considered uniquely human, that learns and improves without human instruction, and that calls into question assumptions about expertise and professional value that employees have built entire careers upon. The fear response isn’t irrational. When your job involves analyzing data, writing reports, generating recommendations, or any of the countless cognitive tasks that AI can now perform at scale, the existential question becomes unavoidable.

What exactly is my value if a machine can do what I spent years learning to do?

And because transformation psychology has always been fundamentally about identity protection, competence preservation, and the grief cycle that accompanies any significant change, AI amplifies these dynamics in ways that require new frameworks for leaders to understand and address.

What the Revised Edition Adds

The expanded 2025 edition of “The Truth About Transformation: Leading in the Age of AI, Uncertainty, and Human Complexity” includes substantial new content addressing these realities.

New analysis explores how AI adoption triggers resistance patterns that differ in intensity and character from previous technology implementations, including the phenomenon of cognitive displacement anxiety where employees experience genuine psychological distress at the prospect of being intellectually redundant. This isn’t garden-variety change resistance. It touches something deeper about human meaning and professional purpose that organizations ignore at their peril.

Updated frameworks provide practical guidance for leaders navigating what I call the human technology tension, the space between organizational pressure to adopt AI capabilities and workforce psychological readiness to embrace tools that feel threatening rather than enabling. These frameworks build on the Human Factor Method™ approach that informed the first edition, extended to address AI-specific challenges, including the communication strategies that work (and don’t work) when employees are afraid for their professional futures.

New case studies illustrate both successful and failed AI transformation efforts across multiple industries, revealing the cultural blind spots, rushed timelines, and human factor breakdowns that distinguish organizations that navigate this transition successfully from those that don’t. These aren’t hypothetical scenarios. They’re drawn from real organizational experiences that illuminate patterns leaders need to recognize and avoid.

Why This Matters Now

Organizations are spending unprecedented amounts on AI transformation initiatives right now, often under competitive pressure that discourages the careful psychological groundwork that determines success or failure. The companies racing to implement AI capabilities without addressing workforce readiness are making the same mistake organizations have always made with transformation: they’re treating it as a technology problem when it’s fundamentally a human problem.

According to research from McKinsey and others, the 70% failure rate hasn’t improved despite decades of transformation experience. AI won’t change that statistic. If anything, it will make it worse because AI triggers psychological resistance at a deeper level than previous technologies. Leaders who understand this, who recognize that their workforce’s fear response isn’t irrational but rather a predictable psychological reaction to perceived identity threat, have an opportunity to approach AI transformation differently and succeed where competitors fail.

What’s changed is the stakes. AI isn’t just another technology implementation. It represents a fundamental shift in how work gets done and what human contribution means in an increasingly automated world. Organizations that navigate this transition successfully will be those whose leaders understand that the human factor isn’t a soft consideration to address after the technology decisions are made. It’s the determining variable that decides whether those technology decisions produce value or become expensive lessons in what happens when you ignore psychology.

The Book’s Purpose

“The Truth About Transformation” was written for leaders who have watched transformation initiatives fail and want to understand why. For executives who suspect something is missing from conventional change management approaches but can’t quite identify what. For anyone responsible for organizational change who recognizes that the people side of transformation is more complex and consequential than most frameworks acknowledge.

The revised edition extends that purpose into territory that didn’t exist when the first edition was written. It addresses the questions leaders are asking now:

How do we implement AI without destroying workforce morale?

How do we communicate change when employees are genuinely afraid for their jobs?

How do we build transformation readiness when the technology itself triggers resistance responses we haven’t encountered before?

There are no easy answers to these questions, but there are frameworks for thinking about them that produce better outcomes than the approach most organizations take, which is to ignore the human factor entirely and hope that technology benefits will be obvious enough that resistance dissolves on its own. That approach didn’t work before AI, and it won’t work now.

The human factor determines change and transformation success or failure. Understanding it changes how you lead. That’s what this book is about.