You can’t read anything about change management without quickly coming across the phrase “the people side of change”. I’ve been wondering what this means. As best as I can tell, when someone says the people side of change they mean determining:

• Who is impacted/affected by the change.
• How the change will impact these people.
• How to reduce their resistance to/increase their adoption of the change.
• How and what to communicate to these people.
• What training, if any, is needed.

There’s nothing wrong with these activities. Each one is important to carry out as part of a change initiative. It’s just that I don’t believe they adequately address the “people side” of change.

I believe the real people side of change is about humanity and agency/involvement.

Speaker, author, coach, and consultant Eryc Eyl (eryceyl.com) posits that we’re all just humans helping other humans be successful and our best selves at work. Labeling people as “stakeholders”, “impacted groups”, “rollout audiences”, etc. in some way impersonalizes or dehumanizes people. This makes it easier to label people as resistant or as an issue that needs to be managed, dealt with, or solved.

Once we view people as humans, the people side of change becomes about how we want to treat fellow human beings as we pursue our business goals. This is where agency and involvement come in.

I suggest that we don’t want people to feel like they have a voice/are being heard and have influence throughout the change process. We want them to actually have a voice, actually be heard, and actually have influence.

As change practitioners, we can help the people we work with create an environment where individuals have agency, where:

• People know that, contrary to popular belief, they do have a choice whether to change or not.
• They don’t need to only have “yeah-rah” feelings or opinions about the change.
• There are supports available to them as they process through the change.
• There isn’t one right way or timeframe to go through the change process.
• As people work through their change process, it’s OK if they decide they need to find a new role.

We can advocate for involving the people that will carry out the change in the creation and execution of the change.

While it may not be practical to involve every single person this way, at a minimum we can involve representatives of each group of people. Doing so would help reduce the number of times I hear comments like these from “receivers” of change:

• We were never made aware of or consulted about this change.
• Nobody asked us what features we needed in the new technology, if what was being designed would actually be helpful for us, or what we might like in a new solution that we don’t currently have.
• No one asked us how this change would affect how we do our jobs. Our jobs are now more difficult, and we are less efficient than before this change took place.
• This change is negatively impacting customer and employee experience.

What would happen if we crafted and carried out change initiatives around this human centered and agency/involvement focused definition of the “people side” of change? Would we have to spend so much time on reducing resistance and increasing adoption? What might happen to the success ratio of change initiatives? How might it affect the morale and energy level of people at work?

Thank you for reading. Please post your thoughts and comments below. I’m curious to hear if anyone has practiced change in this way and what your experience was.

Until next time, take care and keep up the good work!

Mike