When you’ve been part of the workforce as long as I have, you’ve experienced a lot of change management campaigns. And they all kind of look the same.
First comes the coy introduction. A leader stands up at an all-hands meeting and admits that some tool, some process, some universal experience of the organization isn’t very good. Everybody laughs and smiles and nods. And said leader reveals that something better is about to come.
Sure enough, later that day there’s an email. Or your Slack channel has a notice. Or your manager calls everybody together. And you get the great news that something new is about to happen. And never fear — we’re all going to be supported through this change.
You know in your heart it’s going to be inconvenient at the least and painful at the most. But there’s no resisting, because the change is going to happen.
And you just hope — you hope with the fervor of a five-year-old at Christmas — that somehow this time it won’t suck.
So why is it that despite our best intentions and many, many hours of planning, some changes go OK and some are terrible?
TLDR: It’s not you.
The problem is that not all changes are the same. And we keep managing them like they are.
If I need to start using a different form to request my travel expense reimbursement, all I need is a link to the new form and maybe some built-in instructions on how to use it. I don’t need a brand champion. I don’t need a pep rally. I just need to be able to find it.
But if we’re changing our performance review approach? That’s a whole different thing. And it’s not a whole different thing because it’s more important or because it has to do with people.
It’s a whole different thing because I have feelings and attitudes and a viewpoint about how to review performance. In my mind there’s a right way and a wrong way to go about it. And that’s complicated, because it’s built off of a lifetime of experience — being reviewed and doing reviews. A PDF with steps isn’t going to cut the mustard.
One of these changes needs frictionless access to information. The other needs space for unlearning, dialogue, and reflection.
When you apply a heavyweight change process to the expense form, you generate cynicism. (“They called a town hall for THIS?”)
When you apply a lightweight informational approach to rethinking performance reviews, you guarantee failure. (“We did the training. Why isn’t anyone changing?”)
The first move isn’t to pick a change framework. The first move is diagnosis: what kind of change are we actually dealing with here?
Get the diagnosis wrong and it doesn’t matter how good your methodology is. The support won’t match the need.
I’ve been developing a learning-led change framework that starts from this premise — that the leader’s first job is to diagnose the type of change before choosing a strategy.
Contact me today! Let’s discuss the ways you can provide your team with frictionless training that supports your goals.