You put in all the effort to design a change project. You launch it, you train the team, you celebrate. And then a few months later, you look back and realize nobody's doing it anymore. The momentum quietly died, and now you're back at square one.

This episode is about that exact problem—and what I actually do about it on my team at work. I'll walk you through my "Teddy and Judy" framing (visionaries vs. executors), why most sustainment failures are not actually people failures, and the concrete system I built with my team for Q2 of this year—which I lovingly themed "The Sea of Sustainment." You'll get the four-question monitoring plan and the three-tier triage system I use to keep change initiatives alive once the launch buzz fades.

If you're someone who's great at getting the plane off the ground but loses interest once it's airborne, this one's for you.

• Why most change projects don't fail at launch—they fail in the months after
• The Teddy/Judy framework (visionary vs. executor) and why you probably need to be both
• Why "people didn't follow through" is almost never the real explanation
• The four questions every change initiative needs answered before you call it complete
• How to distribute monitoring responsibility across a team without creating surveillance culture
• How to triage findings into three tiers—and why this distinction is everything for team trust
• Why the #1 instinct in healthcare ("they need more training") is usually the wrong answer

• Maintenance is cheap, remediation is expensive—but maintenance requires a system, not good intentions
• The real failure point of most change projects is the absence of any system designed to catch backsliding early
• People are always going to people; you have to plan for that
• Track behaviors, not just outcomes—behaviors are the leading indicator
• Cadence should earn its way down based on team performance, not just time
• When multiple people make the same mistake, the first assumption is not multiple people failing—it's that something about the system, training, or tool is broken
• Teams take their cues about what matters from what their leader pays attention to
• A triage system that treats widespread errors as individual failures will destroy trust; one that treats them as system signals builds psychological safety AND better diagnoses

This episode is the part two to the holding period episode from a few weeks back. The holding period was about being deliberate before saying yes; this is about being deliberate after saying yes—long-term.

If you've taken Change Maker Essentials and want structured support sustaining the leadership practice you built there, Nurse Leader HQ opens for enrollment at the end of June. The waitlist is where the application dates, the opportunity to book a discovery call, and all the details will be shared first.

• Change Maker Essentials
• Nurse Leader HQ (waitlist)
• Instagram: @nursing.the.system