To better understand part of the reason that change efforts fail, it is important to understand the differences between the cultures of the executive, who usually starts major corporate change initiatives, and the employees (Schein, p. 13). 

The CEO and/or a handful of leaders at the top of the company are responsible for the short and long term financial success of the organization.  The "executive worldview is built around the necessity to maintain an organizations health" and "they cannot get away from having to worry about and manage the financial survival and growth of their organization" (Schein, 1996, p. 15). In addition, because of their positions at the top of large hierarchical organizations, executives lead from a distance.  Because they manage managers, who manager managers, who manage people, their cultural view of the organization is distinct from those at the operational level of the organization.  Because of this, they often see people as just one of many resources and systems of the entire organizations.  "Because the organization is very large, it becomes depersonalized and abstract and, therefore, has to be run by rules, routines (systems), and rituals ('machine bureaucracy')" (Schein, 1996, p. 15).  Therefore, there is a tendency for senior executives to see the organization as a large, depersonalized machine.  Their motivation is often to improve the effectiveness of this machine in order to improve the financial status of the company, and their personal status in the hierarchical organization of the company.  A leader approaching a change effort from this view point has the natural tendency to manage the process from a top down approach, looking at the change effort as a process which can be managed and controlled.   However, it would be helpful for change leaders to understand that the cultural focus of those at the operational level of the organization is quite different from their own, and if not recognized can lead to resistance that could and often does thwart the success of the change efforts.     Their cultural orientation is "based on human interaction" and they are more dependent on "high levels of communication, trust, and teamwork" than other levels of management in the organization (Schein, 1996, p. 13).  As Paul Strebel points out, a major obstacle of the change effort is that employees will not interpret change efforts based on the systems viewpoint of the executive, but rather on what it means to them directly.  Are they threatened by the change?  Will they need to work harder because of the change?  Will the change affect their pay?  Will the reward of the change be worth it?  Will their relationship with their customers change?  Is the change changing the basic relationship that the employee has come to accept with the company?  Even if the company does a great job in communicating the change to its employees, and even if everyone knows the change, unless these questions are answered, employees will resist change.  "In the context of a major change program, a manager's sensitivity to this dimension of his or her relationship with subordinates is crucial to gaining commitment to new goals and performance standards" (Strebel, 1996, p. 88). 

Strebel describes this relationship as one of the key compacts which exists between the employee and the organization.  "It is often the dimension of a personal compact that is undermined most in a change initiative when conflicts arise and communication breaks down" and "when management's credibility, once lost, is most difficult to recover" (Strebel, 1996, p. 88).  Unless leaders have developed a compact of trust with employees, even before the change effort has begun, it is difficult to establish once the rumors of change begin. 

This different cultural viewpoint, and negative experiences with prior change efforts, are leading causes of resistance to many change efforts.  Strebel points out that "senior managers consistently misjudge the effect of this gap on their relationships with subordinates and on the effort required to win acceptance of change" (Strebel, 1996, p. 86).  Because these gaps are underestimated by executives, many change efforts are never fully successful.