In my My Change Management “Come From” post, I talked about how change practitioners are often brought in late in a project to “reduce resistance” and “increase adoption”. I posited that there’s a more humanistic and effective way to “do” change management and briefly shared three of my core beliefs about change management.

• Change management is more than telling and training.
• We create our future with our current actions.
• It’s the business’s change, not the change team’s.

In my What is the people side of change, anyway? post I talked about creating an environment where people have choices regarding change at work and where they are involved in the creation and execution of changes. Those are two examples of how change management is more than telling and training.  

In this post, I dive deeper into two more examples.

We are humans working with other humans

If we accept this premise, then part of being a change practitioner is factoring in what we know about human beings into how we practice change. We don’t need to be neuroscientists or have an advanced Psychology or Sociology degree, but it is helpful if we consider factors such as:

• How do emotions (not just information) influence how people navigate through change?
• Are our brains “hard wired” to approach change in a certain way?
• Do mindfulness practices help us work through change?
• How do our bodies process change?
• How does past trauma affect how we navigate change today?
• Does change we’re experiencing outside of work affect how well we’re able to handle change at work?

Some of these questions may seem out of place or not workplace appropriate. We’re not counselors, after all! While I agree that change practitioners aren’t counselors, I think these questions point to something important. We often assume that all people experiencing change at work are homogeneous and are starting from the same spot. All we have to do is tell them about the change and train them on what to do, right?

If nothing else, these questions point out a fallacy in this assumption. We are holistic human beings with brains, emotions, and different life experiences. While communications and training address part of who we are and how we go through change, they fall well short of adequately helping us successfully navigate change.

We are holistic human beings with brains, emotions, and different life experiences.

How might treating people as holistic human beings change or enhance the activities we do throughout a change initiative? How have you incorporated these (or other) factors into your change management practice?

Do policies and procedures support the change?

This is a factor that is often overlooked. Before a business implements change, have we as change practitioners helped them consider whether their policies, procedures, and “the way they do things around here” support the change?

For example, does how the business measures and rewards performance still support the old way of doing things?

If so, this will most likely negatively impact the road to successful adoption. People may end up being labeled as resistant, when most likely they are just trying to do the best they can when communications/training are telling them one thing and policies/procedures are telling them a different thing.

Have you encountered this situation, where there is dissonance between the desired ways of working outlined in a change initiative and the ways of working supported in a business’s polices and procedures? How did resolving or not resolving this dissonance affect the people involved?

Thank you for reading. Please post your thoughts and comments below. Until next time, take care and keep up the good work!

Mike