Change Management: Promises, Promises

Change management promises to ensure the benefits of a change are achieved while minimizing the anxiety and stress that people experience going through it.

But what kind of promise is it?

The steady citing of change project success (fail?) rates would indicate it’s a broken promise. The promise is made, but not kept; either the results fall short, or people are insufficiently supported, or both…

Perhaps it’s a false promise; one that was never really intended to be kept. You know, like when you run into an old friend and promise to reach out to set up a “catch up” lunch… While there may be an outlier or two, I don’t believe the predominant change management promises are falsely made.

More likely, considering the flip-the-coin track record of success, they are empty promises. There is the intent to deliver, but not the capability.

We know, personally, that change can be challenging. Organizational change, which necessarily involves people, is quite difficult.

But this is not, at its core, a people problem!

The real problem is that our change management models and protocols are overwhelmingly one-dimensional; they see change projects as a people challenge, and therefore emphasize actions intended to help people understand, accept, and change.

This is well-intended and quite often well-executed, but it is not enough to deliver on the promise!

Somewhat ironically, to deliver on the promise—to make it a true promise—we need to pair our people focus with looking beyond them, into their context and environment. From behavioral science and social psychology, we learn that people’s behavior is primarily a function of their environment…

The empty change management promise is the result of a process problem. There is another section of the change management playbook—a second half—that is missing.

My book BETTER CHANGE makes the case for incorporating organization design into our change management plans and explores the critical role of leaders in supporting their change management practitioners to deliver on the true promise.

No more empty promises.