8 Things to stop doing in change this year

The advantage of having a sizeable network is that I hear many stories about good, bad and terrible change projects. Most times they inspire me and sometimes they make me wonder what those people were thinking!

1. Refusing to accept complexity

I love me a good one-page summary and in the right hands at the right time, they can really help to get the message across. But zoom out far enough and you lose all context and nuance, problems disappear, and everything is awesome! And then nothing works in practice. Sometimes you just have to sit with the complexity and ambiguity of change, which is hard and messy work and not very popular. Unfortunately, even a simple change isn’t all that simple anymore and it’s time we stop pretending that it was ever a good idea to think so.

2. Facilitating compressed timeframes

Ah yes, the most classic of classics! Let’s give ourselves just enough time to do an average job, said no one ever!  Change is not software engineering or process redesign or construction. It is involved in all of these things, but change takes time. Say it with me boys and girls, change takes time. We all know and experience it every day, but step into a random meeting room where a project team is hosting its kick-off planning session and we’re still trying to schedule the change day-by-day to satisfy our illusion of control. Come on, have some faith in your capability as project team to deliver the goods. Good things take time and are worth doing right the first time. You know, that whole story about nine women delivering a baby in one month or baking a cake at double the heat in half the time. I’ve tried it, doesn’t taste good. The cake, not the baby.

3. ‘Doing’ Stealth Change

This one is a whole other level of strange. How do you expect change to work if you don’t talk about it, don’t allocate resources or set up a project? Plaster some posters on walls? Send out an upbeat video of laughing people dancing through the office? I agree that not every change has to be a major production, some important changes I worked on were just not that exciting. This stealth approach doesn’t work because it makes it look like you’re trying to hide something or don’t care enough to back it. I’ve never seen it work, but maybe that’s because it happened in stealth-mode…

 4. Multitasking

This one is for all the change managers (and me). We really, really, really need to stop trying to be everything for everyone. Multitasking is a myth (I know, so disappointing!) that we perpetuate because it keeps us employed and makes us look like project/change/comm superstars . When we’re in the office, maybe. But the reality is we crash and burn at home, over the weekend or at the end of the contract. And for what? I have no idea. I just know I’ve done it and experienced the glow of being told you single-handedly ‘saved’ the project. But it doesn’t last, serves no-one and 12 months from now no-one cares, including you. Let’s look after ourselves a bit better, so everyone can have a better experience, we all deserve that much for the hard and complex work we do.

 5. Blaming it all on change fatigue

Just stop it! Change fatigue is (sorry, weasels) weasel speak to justify poor resource planning and leadership. I wrote it before and I will say it again; change fatigue is an organisational choice. “We’ll do one more project, one more scope change, one more product feature, one more reorg and that will fix it!” But it somehow never does. How about instead you spend all that wasted time and effort on making a practical plan (on-a-page) that is rooted in the realistic capabilities and capacities of your organisation? It’s really not THAT hard.

You have this many people, with that many skills and this many projects that take an estimated so many hours. Add in some contingency for things that go wrong (they always do) and  then stick.to.the.damn.plan! However, if you think positivity bias is a good thing and that 60-hour+ work weeks ‘build character’, there’s not much I can do for you.

 6. Accepting absent sponsors

If you are a change sponsor and make it a point of pride that you hardly ever meet the team, show up for meetings unprepared and expect a watermelon one-pager to tell the whole story of the change in the upcoming project meeting, you are the problem. If no one ever told you that, you’re talking to the wrong people. Having an active sponsor is a huge boost to any change and if you can’t commit for whatever reason, have the good grace to step aside or appoint someone who can. It might be the best and biggest contribution you could possibly make.

 7. Creating buy-in

We keep hearing that change is constant. That implies that most people are probably used to it by now. They might not enjoy it every day, but no one ever said that life is a party and every day at work will be fun. The idea of having to create buy-in, desire, interest or whatever you want to call it feels a bit outdated and more than a bit patronising to me. As if people are so dull that they can’t possibly see the merit of a change for themselves and have to be told in very small words with lots of pictures by a person smarter than them.

Could it be possible that the change is just a bad idea and that’s why they don’t like it?  I’d like to suggest that moving forward we present the facts, pros and cons and the give people a reasonable time to think it over before we ask them to sign up for task A,B or C. You know, treat them like the professionals you hired them to be. We tend to confuse ignorance with indifference (see stealth change) but you can’t expect people to feel anything about something they’ve never heard of before, right? Keeping people in the dark is so 2023 and apparently, they figured out the flashlight function on their phones by now.

8. Trusting that Technology will ‘solve it for us’

Change tools and technology are getting better at inspiring rates, but organisations are still reluctant to invest in an integrated suite of tools or even a few licenses to run a pilot. The value-add is still not self-evident just yet. And going by the recent (and very welcome) absence of AI-Change cheat sheets, workshops and posts in my feed, the AI-bros and bro-ettes have either gone underground, cashed in or found a new toy that we’ll hear about soon enough, in ALL CAPS.

 I am quite possibly the biggest fan of applied AI in Australia and so excited about its potential for our profession it’s almost ridiculous. But… AI will make everything we do faster and more accessible. Which also means that bad change practices can be accelerated exponentially which is like sprinting before you can walk. Add to that mix that a lot of the AI-generated change content, which spreads like wildfire, is so untrue it would be funny, if it didn’t amount to spreading disinformation at the speed of light.

 For the next 12-24 months, be prepared to talk your executive down from starting massive AI initiatives where ‘simple’ data engineering with existing tools will do just fine. You probably don’t have enough data to feed an AI for more than a few seconds at this stage, not even mentioning the tech infrastructure to make it run smoothly. Soon enough, AI will be integrated into everything we do as change professionals, so start your collaboration now and keep adding value beyond a quick list of prompts. Craft actionable, flexible change plans, engage in creative and meaningful ways with stakeholders to build capability and create a better change experience for everyone.

 We’ll get there, maybe even this financial year!

#Change#StopIt #BetterExperience #listicle