Often we hear change practitioners call out the challenges of working with organisations that are not change mature. Yes it is easier for change practitioners to work within organisations that are more mature in managing change. This means that the change concepts and approaches are easily understood and adopted. This also means that you don’t need to spend a lot of time covering the foundational approaches of change before driving project results.
When organisations are less change mature, change practitioners need to do a lot more level setting work to explain their role, and foundational change management concepts. For example, the importance of engagement and authenticity, and getting feedback from stakeholder groups prior to change implementation.
Structured communication and learning channels may need to be setup. Without these being established, messages may not be flowing between the targeted stakeholder groups.
However, every organisation is in a different continuum in their development of their change maturity. How do we work with organisations that simply do not have in place a lot of the foundational capabilities of managing change?
Frame everything as a part of general business management
15 years ago when I was at Intel there was no change management function per se. There were also no dedicated change management professionals. What we know now as change management was covered under the work of Project Managers and the Human Resources Organizational Development function. Most managers were not familiar with change management concepts or applications.
However, from a learning and development perspective what Intel did well was to integrate managing change concepts within general management skills. All levels of management development included a component of managing change. After all, this is an organisation in a fast-changing hi-tech environment where change is a normal part of how the industry evolves.
In particular, first-line manager, second-line manager as well as senior manager development programs all had general management components. Everything ranging from setting clear goals and expectations, communicating clearly, asking for and receiving feedback, driving for results, supporting and developing the team, were all foundational parts of managerial development. As a result, the organisation is quite used to ongoing changes either operational, structural or strategic ones.
The point here is that in order to drive successful change, it may not be necessary to have a dedicated change function nor formalised change management development programs. Change management is a part of general management, just like human resources or operations management.
The challenge for the change practitioner is to diagnose which parts of the fabric of the organisation is not change mature, and therefore could become potential obstacles for successful change process implementation. These may include:
The ability of targeted leaders in leading change successfully (judging by previous change history)
The ability of impacted stakeholder groups including employees in trusting leaders in undergoing the change process
The existence of various learning and engagement platforms and processes from which change implementation may leverage throughout the initiative
Experience in undergoing change initiatives that follow a structured rigour where stakeholder consultation, ongoing tracking of results, and discipline in execution are adhered to
Planning capability in engaging stakeholders using clear fact-based visualisation of impact activities and using this to balance and sequence overall business capacity
After identifying those elements that could potentially impede the successful execution and adoption of change, the next task is to ‘frame’ your work around improving business processes and capabilities to support initiative success. And the trick of doing this well in change immature organisations is to frame it without using change concepts or jargon.
As hard as it may seem, some of the terms you may want to avoid include:
change leadership capability
burning platform
change champions
change vision
change approach/strategy
change readiness
I know! This sounds like an impossible feat not to use standard change jargon and concepts. However, this is the key to engaging with organisations that are less change mature. Instead of change-specific language, try using general business terms instead. These are some examples:
Instead of change leadership capability, leader behaviours required
Instead of burning platform, articulating the clear reasons for the change
Instead of change champions, business unit initiative reps
Instead of change vision, initiative end-state
Instead of change approach/strategy, leading our people through the initiative
Instead of change readiness, implementation or initiative readiness
Framing change concepts into general business speak
In framing your change approach and plan and ‘translating’ this into business-speak. There are 2 key levels to focus on.
1. Strategic
This is about cutting through to the core of why we are changing and how the change helps to meet a particular strategic goal. For low change mature stakeholders, this needs to be as basic as possible. So, none of the lofty elevator pitches that your corporate communications person has carefully crafted. But, a lay-man wording of why the change is needed and how this helps the organisation.
2. Operational
This is one of the most critical parts of dissecting the change. It is about breaking down your change approach into the various elements that impact the operations of the business. It is laying out the operational activities that are being planned to drive stakeholders through the change process. For example,
What process changes will mean for the frontline consultant, in terms of work steps, bandwidth, reporting, collaboration, work focus areas, etc.
What technology changes will team for team work in terms of who does work, the frequency of exchanges, the speed and process of decision making, audit tracing,
Frame change activities as a part of project steps
Another challenge in working with less change mature organisations is positioning project change implementation activities in a way that resonates and make sense. To make things simple for the business, try and use as least jargon as possible and explain the ‘why’ and purpose of each activity.
Here are some examples.
Change impact assessment -> Why is this needed?
The assessment defines in detail what is changing and how this affects different parts of the organisation, whether is people, process, customer, technology, etc.
How to use it? After understanding in detail what is changing, this then helps us plan out how to engage the impacted groups of people, and it also helps us to determine how to give them the right skills and support
Stakeholder matrix -> Why is this needed?
This breaks down which groups of people by business unit, function, team, role, in terms of how we plan to engage with them, using what engagement channels, and how critical or influential they are to the success of the project.
How to use it? The information on the groups of people impacted by this project determines those we engage with and how we engage with them. It also determines those we need to support with the right skills and know-how. Having the right information of those impacted means that we don’t miss groups of people that we should be engaging with.
It starts with one – finding the first sponsor/champion
Even if less mature organisations there will be managers who ‘get’ what you are trying to do in driving change. They may not know the terminology, the concepts nor the ways to measure change effectiveness. However, experienced managers should intuitively understand the importance of engagement, measurement, setting clear goals and expectations, skills, and capabilities.
When you start to work your way around the organisations you should come across them. They can help to either ‘sponsor’ your project if they are in the right position and their role has the influencing power over your project. He/She may not be the ‘project sponsor’, instead, a political sponsor who is influential enough to create clout to drive movement in the change process.
You may also come across various potential ‘champions’ who are passionate, positive about the change, and diligent enough that you can work with to channel change energy into the various stakeholder groups. These champions may be frontline level, first-line manager, or senior managers.
Remember, any change starts with one person. One by one, the change takes shape and the influence takes place through each interaction and each engagement. Even if you can only have a small number of champions, you will be amazed at the results you can achieve through the dedication of the few.
Use data to tell stories
Even in less change mature organisations, managers use manage to manage the business. This means, if you can gather the right change data to tell the story of how the initiative may pan out across the business, you can easily communicate and influence the business. Especially in less change mature businesses, data is absolutely key.
What are some of the ways in which change data can help to crystalise the importance of change tactics and approaches?
Examples of data visualisation from The Change Compass
Change impact data can tell a visual and influential story of what is going to happen to the organisation. For example:
Which parts of the organisation are more impacted? What roles? What are the relative sizes of impact?
How much time is required for particular roles as part of change implementation activities throughout the implementation phase?
What’s the timing of implementation activities and how do these overlap with other project activities or operational priorities?
Scenarios of implementation roadmap including potential risks and benefits of alternative scenarios
Other data can be used to tell stories of the progress of the project include, change readiness assessment results, training completion rates, training session satisfaction feedback, stakeholder readership of knowledge article pages, and attendance and engagement level at briefing or town hall sessions.
Most change practitioners follow a standard change approach. For the past 20 years popular change management content have focused mainly on one part of the discipline – change methodology. As a new-ish discipline there has been a big demand for the ‘how to’ in change management. These include how to follow a sequence of steps in executing a project, and step-by-step path to becoming a better change leader. Clear easy-to-follow steps with associated acronyms have dominated our discipline. A data-driven change approach has not been on the horizon for most organisations.
Is following a methodology bad? Well, not necessarily. A methodology helps to instil critical steps that may ensure that a minimum set of outcomes be achieved in implementing a change initiative. The assumption is that by following these steps, a set of basic work is done that it would be harder to fail. Especially for less experienced change practitioners, following a methodology is highly beneficial.
After while, many also tend to rely on their ‘experience’ and tend to apply similar approaches for most change initiatives. This may be OK if the stakeholders and change initiatives are all similar. However, as stakeholders evolve with changes and new changes take place that are more ‘transformational’ or require different attitudes and skills, then what has worked in the past may not work in the future.
We know that the most popular Google keyword searches in Change Management are mostly related to methodology. For example, some of the most popular keywords include change management process, prosci change management, adkar, etc.
The most popular Google searches on change management are mostly do with change methodology
However, the bigger question is should we continue to follow a methodology-driven approach in designing our change approach? In a nutshell, for more experienced change practitioners …. No. For the rest of the article let’s explore why this is the case.
What are the benefits of a data-driven change approach?
The design of the change approach is supported by data and therefore less biased by personal preferences and unsupported opinions, and as a result when you present the change approach you are less likely to face objections and disagreements
With the right data, you’re able to articulate the risk of not using a particular change approach
Ability to take a ‘whole picture’ view of the change landscape in making the right change implementation decisions
Match the right change approach to the sponsor and executive leadership styles so that the initiative is leveraging those leadership facets, with any supplemented tactics as needed
What is a data-driven change approach?
A data-driven change approach is a change approach that is informed by data. What does this look like?
Business case
With a data driven change approach, historical data of change and business performance informs the business case. Possible data that could be used for business case may include:
Historical data on business improvement performance results, especially targets vs actual results
Current operational indicator performance and any previous change and business improvement interventions
Change maturity of impacted business units including operational maturity in supporting change implementation
Scoping
During initial scoping of the initiative, the following critical data elements may be taken into account:
Use historical change initiative outcomes to rate potential sizes of impact on business units
Use easily available data in the areas of people, business operations, and process/systems to assess spread of the impact
Planning
This is traditionally one of the most important parts of change approach design and the phase where all facets of the determined change approach is documented and agreed by stakeholders. Taking a data-driven approach means:
Using only demonstrable data and evidence to derive an fact-driven change approach
If there are elements of the change where there has not been previous data available, then early experiments may be designed to test the selected change approach
Stakeholder engagement approaches are determined based on what has worked in the past, e.g. survey responses from town hall sessions, leader feedback,
Communications channel and content design are designed based on previous demonstrable methods, e.g. communications hit rate, ‘like’ rate, article viewership, etc.
Project priority ratings across initiatives to ensure clear alignment for stakeholders
Portfolio level change impact information from other projects to assist in change release sequencing and capacity planning
Examples of portfolio-level change data visualization from The Change Compass
BCG has come up with a simple 2 by 2 grid for determining change strategies. The 2 axes are ‘clarity of ends and ‘clarity of means’. Clarity of ends refers to what the end state looks like, and clarity of means refer to how clear the path is to getting to the end state.
Using this grid there are 5 major different types of change strategies:
River crossing
Escaping the swamp
Souting and wandering
Planned itinerary
Hill climbing
It is important to note that whilst this may be a good general reference in determining the change approach, leveraging evidence and data in other aspects of change can greatly determine the right change strategy to be adopted.
In fact if you’re driving a large multi-year transformation, it is likely that you may need to adopt different change approaches during different phases of the program. It also depends how your stakeholders are responding and what approach best suit the situation.
For example, a ‘hill climbing’ approach could be appropriate if it is clear from your stakeholder feedback that upcoming milestones are not super clear. On the other hand, the change is complex and requires persistence and unwielding push from the senior management to continue. Whereas, in the beginning of the transformation journey it maybe that a lot of exploration and discover is required to figure out what the change looks like. In this earlier phase, a ‘escape the swamp’ may be the change approach.
Implementation
This is one of the most critical parts of initiative roll out as this is when the rubber hits the road and change starts to take place. Some of the data-driven aspects of the change approach involves:
Continuous pulsing and checking of stakeholder readiness
Regular surveys and dip-stick checks on adoption behaviours and change sentiments from impacted stakeholders
Monitor business operations performance related indicators that track movements in change adoption
Social media sentiment analysis of impacted stakeholder groups, and types and amount of questions asked at appointed communication channels, and other potential indicators on people capability in adopting the change
Training attendance rates, and participant test scores
Ascertaining what the change environment looks like for impacted stakeholders is a key linchpin for a data-driven change approach during the implementation phase. When the ‘rubber hits the road’ as execution starts to take place, you may find that things are not going exactly as planned. It could be that stakeholders completely did not understand the positioning or that change tactics in imparting the value of the initiative did not resonate.
On the other hand, it could be that there is a myriad of other initiatives that the impacted business units are experiencing. Therefore, it is difficult for employees to focus on one set of changes, when there are several types of changes happening concurrently. With lack of focus, coordination and clear priority set by leaders, it often happens that none of the changes land successfully due to saturation and lack of focus.
With the right portfolio level data, it is possible to identify these risks and avoid them altogether. Even if you don’t have easy access to portfolio level change impact data, at least have the conversation with your business stakeholders to understand what else is happening and how are things landing from an employee perspective.
Post release
Even after go-live it is important to keep tracking the change adoption to ensure that there is sufficient continual focus to reach full benefits. In fact this is one of the key reasons why a lot of projects fail. It is because the whole project has been wrapped up too quickly post release and there is not enough accountability and focus placed on continually achieving the benefits targeted.
What are some of the data points to focus on? This depends on the nature of the change. Typical metrics to focus on include:
What does a data-driven change environment look like?
In the previous section we focused on all the various data points that can be leveraged throughout a project to make data-driven change decisions to move the initiative forward toward the right trajectory.
In an organisation where data drives how change is designed, orchestrated and implemented … what would this look like?
Let’s approach this in 5 different themes in order to describe core practices that should take place to support an environment that thrives on data-driven change.
1. Democratisation of data/Openness to share data
Data democratisation has been an emerging them in the IT and analytics world. What it means is basically that everyone has access to a range of data and that there aren’t unnecessary gatekeepers that control the data and stopping the data being shared. The data can be used to run the business, understand what is happening, conduct rootcause analysis and overall make better business decisions.
The overall goal is to have as many people as possible access data with little barriers in accessing the data and knowing how to read and understand the data.
Imagine an organisation where employees and managers have access to change data and have the ability to understand what is happening, how each other are responding to change, their concerns and how this is supporting or impeding change. There is significant power in harnessing the greater understanding for the change that is being driven, to garner involvement, engagement and connection.
2. Investing in capturing and publishing data
An assumption in the previous theme is that the organisation has the focus on collecting and harvesting the data. This includes change data. Without the investment in gathering change data there will be nothing to work with.
There is no doubt that most progressive organisations understand the importance of investing in data collection and analysis. There are many ways to determine the value of the data. These include opportunity cost, regulatory fines or settlement value. In terms of the value of change data, the best way to understand it is in terms of opportunity cost, where without the right data there could be significant cost in making the wrong change tactic decisions.
Further more, there is significant benefit in monitizing the company’s historical change data. Some examples of this include the ability to use historical change data to determine seasonal workloads on particular stakeholder groups and roles. Change data may also be linked to other business performance data to track overall change adoption and benefit realisation. Let’s say one project is aiming for $2 million in benefits, and across the project portfolio the total benefits targeted is $15 million. Even if change data supports just 20% of the achievement of full benefits, this equates to $3 million just in terms of tangible financial benefits. There are also non-tangible benefits that can be tracked as well.
3. Incorporating data governance
Data governance is about defining who within the company has control over data assets and how these data assets might be used. This includes people, process, and technology required to manage and protect the data assets.
For IT, Marketing and HR departments the concept of data governance is part of the expected parts of managing the function. There are often dedicated roles, teams and committees in undertaking data governance processes and systems.
For change data, there is also a need to ensure that there is some level of data governance. This does not necessary mean building a complex function if there is no need for such. What it does mean is to have concerted focus and effort to ensure that the change data is managed in a way to ensure that the data is achieving the value that the organisation is looking for.
Some elements of data governance here may include:
Data storage and operations: Ensuring that the data is stored in a safe, and easily accessible location
Data security: Ensuring that the right privacy and access level is provided, however without so much control that user access is inhibited
Data integration and interoperability: The change data should be easily extracted, shared, replicated and utilised across systems if required
Documents and content: There are different types of change data, and the trick is to ensure all these different types of files and data are easily accessible
Data quality: Ensuring that the data is updated sufficiently and can be trusted is key. “Rubbish in, rubbish out” is a common phrase that is true nonetheless. Data that is not constantly refreshed is also one that will not deliver value to the organisation.
4. Leadership support
Like everything with managing change, leadership support is critical. Some go as far as saying that without leadership support no change will fly. This may not be true since there are lots of examples of grassroots-driven changes that are not initially driven by leaders. The same goes with driving a data-driven change environment.
Getting the blessings from your senior leaders will go a long way to driving a ‘data is king’ change environment. However, even if your leaders do not start out being your champions, there are ways to nourish and develop their support.
In business, leaders naturally look to data to make various decisions. Traditionally in change management tangible and visual data has not always been plentiful to support decision making. As a result, leaders may not know how to read, interpret and utilise change data. You will need to educate and support leaders to understand how to utilise change data and guide them through examples and scenarios.
5. Collaboration across initiatives
Teams are effective for various reasons. When you’re in a team you are able to form strong personal relationships and receive that support that you need. Through ongoing work with your team you can focus on a set of outcomes that you can contribute together with the team.
However, the nature of teams is that you will by design see other teams as ‘outsiders’ and have less intimate relationship with them. Those you are less familiar with you also develop less trust.
And as a result, project teams tend to stick within their own teams and focus on working with their particular set of stakeholders. However, to design a better employee or customer experience in planning for change, initiatives need to work together. There will be plenty of situations where changes in releases, planned activities will be better shifted to achieve a better employee outcome.
In situations where there is multiple releases impacting the same stakeholder group, most will leave it to the project management office to make the priority call. However, the process of escalating the issue for decisions to be made takes time and may sometimes create unnecessary anxiety across concerned project teams. A better way to approach this with the right change data is that project teams can proactively work together as a part of release and stakeholder readiness planning.
What is the overall opportunity in taking a data-driven vs. methodology driven change approach? Hopefully this article has convinced you some of the advantages and how to go about applying it. “Data is the new oil for the digital economy”. With Covid the reliance of business on data has been a wakeup call. This will continue to intensity in the years to come. For change practitioners we also need to adopt a data-centric approach in our work with the organisation. The alternative could be that we lose our influence, trust and relevance for the business in this digital world where data is embedded within all facets of our lives.
What will your next step be in taking a more data-driven change approach?
Data is king. This is especially in current times of uncertainty. With data comes power, influence and outcomes. Lots of disciplines have leveraged the power of data to drive better outcomes. Marketers would not dream of doing any part of their job without data. Operations is driven by data in all aspects of managing the business. Even Human Resources is heavily focused on numbers, pay and benefits, employee sizes and structures, cultural measurements and employee sentiment trends.
For change management data must also be the core pillar that drives our work.
Unfortunately for a lot of practitioners the only data used tends to be sizing number of people impacted, counting the number of people being trained, training evaluation scores or change readiness sentiment surveys.
Surely, there is more we can do to adopt a more data-driven change approach?
Absolutely! Stay tuned for our upcoming article on how to do this.
In the meantime, here is an infographic on painting a picture of what a data-driven change environment looks like.
There are 8 core components:
Focus on capturing initiative and portoflio-wide data
Data-driven change approach throughout project phases
Take user/business centric versus project centric view
Investing in data insight capability building
Leader sponsorhip in data-led investment and focus
Collaboration/Openness to share data
Using data in routine business/project meetings
Incorporate data governance within roles and responsibilities
The past 1.5 years has been super challenging for most organisations. The constant stop and start interruptions of Covid has taken a toll on most employees. One minute we are going back to work the next minute we are not. One minute we have Covid cases under control, the next minute infection rates are out of control.
However, corporate initiatives are not in any way slowed down by Covid. If anything there is more organisational change resulting from Covid. Covid has not only resulted in ways of working changes, but also deep industry, economy, consumer and technology changes.
Now that most economies are starting to come out of lockdowns and opening up, what does this mean for initiatives? Well, amidst the atmosphere of the emotional and psycho-social turmoil that has been the journey for most employees as a result of COVID, the most important change approach can be summarised by one word ….
OPTIMISM
Why is it important to incorporate a sense of optimism within every change initiative?
After more than a year of being isolated and experiencing the various disruptions of not being able to have a normal life of shopping, visiting friends and travelling, we need to acknowledge and reset the mood. How we approach work is indeed affected by the overall mood around us. Resetting the mood and instilling a sense of positivity and optimism is absolutely critical.
Without optimism, employees may still be harbouring the lingering mood of dealing with Covid. Negativity will never help to transition people during the change process. It is hope and optimism that will carry energy and excitement which will then drive action.
Think of the last time you were feeling down and weary. What were some of your behaviours? Typical behaviours when you’re feeling down in the dumps include not connecting with family and friends, being socially withdrawn, disruptions in sleep, being less physically active, etc. You were also more likely to think negatively, such as “things won’t get better”, “there’s no point trying”, “might as well not try”. These are definitely not the thoughts and behaviours that will help people transition during the change process.
So how do we instil a sense of optimism within our change initiatives?
1. Celebrate the ‘return to normal’ (whatever normal looks like!). As companies start to gradually have employees return to work, initiatives must also support this by creating a sense of excitement and positivity. Think of approaches such as:
Uplifting speeches by leaders
Gift objects such as cupcakes and drinks as a part of the celebration theme
Online events promoting positive discussions and sharing
Social events fostering activity and excitement
2. Highlight new ideas and approaches to the initiative. To demonstrate that things are no longer just ‘ho-hum’ as was the case during Covid, adopt new engagement and communication approaches to liven up the initiative. Even better, ask impacted stakeholders to come up with bright ideas of how to generate a renewed sense of optimism
3. Leverage the power of communication to impart excitement and positivity. Incorporate bright and colourful images, quotes and graphic themes to instil positive energy.
4. Display consistent behaviour. There is nothing worse than having positive themes throughout, only to have initiative leads speak with monotone voice supplemented by lethargic behaviour. We are social animals. We can ‘smell’ low energy. You may need to proactive coach your leaders to ensure that they are displaying the right behaviours across all modalities …. The tone of voice, gestures, responses, reactions, etc. All aspects of behaviour can impart mood. And your job is to design and shape them to be one that is more positive.
Adopting a behavioural science approach to managing behaviour change means leveraging scientific research about human behaviours and using this to better manage employee behaviour and change. A lot of the common practices in change management are not always based on scientific research. What is assumed as common change approaches may in fact not be substantiated by research and data.
A behavioural science approach to managing change recognizes that successful change initiatives require more than just new processes or training programs—they hinge on shifting employee behaviour and embedding new behaviours across the organization. By drawing on evidence-based insights, such as the transtheoretical model, change practitioners can better understand how individuals move through stages of personal growth and adopt new ways of working. This approach underscores the crucial role of leadership, with the executive team and direct reports acting as role models who demonstrate and reinforce desired behaviors. Engaging small groups and the wider workforce in the process ensures that behavioural change is not only top-down but also authentic and sustainable, addressing the way people perceive and respond to organizational change over the long term.
Moreover, involving employees in both the design and reporting of change efforts fosters ownership and helps weave multiple changes into the fabric of the organization. Performance reviews and ongoing reinforcement are essential for sustaining new behaviors and achieving better outcomes. By prioritizing human-centric design and leveraging the power of relationships—such as the nature of leadership relationships and the influence of peer networks—organizations can create an environment where behavioural change is not just a one-off initiative but a continuous process aimed at long-term success.
How to create a behavioral and cultural shift?
To create a behavioural and cultural shift, engage stakeholders through open communication, set clear objectives, and model desired behaviours. Encourage feedback and recognize progress to reinforce the change. Additionally, provide training and resources to support individuals as they adapt, ensuring a cohesive transition towards the new culture.
We talk to an industry veteran of behavioural science, Tony Salvador. Tony has 30+ years of research background behind him and a long-time ex-Inteller and Senior Fellow. At Intel, Tony travelled around the globe researching human factors and how people behave with technology.
There are many valuable takeaways for the change practitioner.
Some of these include:
Engineering psychology and human centric design
Analogy of pickaxe and the change approach
Principle of aversion to loss
People involvement and transactional change
Determining the nature of leadership relationship with employees
Story telling and insight into change culture
Example of Brazilian translator and people’s stories
Power of observation and listening
The nature of relationships and how they determine change
Change rationale in weaving in multiple changes
Involving people in reporting to achieve authenticity
Building the case and involving employees to derive case for change
Research on aversion to loss can explain why people don’t want to change. I spoke with Senior Fellow, anthropologist and ex-Inteller Tony Salvador.
It sounds completely illogical but true ….
This plays out in various facets of how people make decisions about choices … including in a change transformations context.
This is just one of the many things I spoke with Tony Salvador about.
Change aversion is a powerful psychological concept rooted in loss aversion, where individuals tend to fear losing what they have more than they value gaining something of equal magnitude. This phenomenon plays a significant role in why many people resist new changes, whether in their personal lives or within organizations, and particularly affects how product managers, leaders, and customer-facing teams approach change initiatives. It impacts their decision-making processes heavily, especially when they perceive potential losses that could overshadow a gain of equal magnitude.
At the individual level, the degree of change aversion varies depending on personal circumstances and perceptions. Original research grounded in Prospect Theory explains that people evaluate potential changes not just by the prospective benefits but by the risks of losing familiar routines, status, or comfort. For example, individuals are often more concerned about losing $2 than they are motivated by the prospect of gaining $5, because the psychological impact of loss outweighs that of an equivalent gain. This loss aversion creates an emotional barrier that can prevent even well-intentioned changes from being embraced.
The effects of change aversion can be observed in many contexts, including business transformations and customer satisfaction. For product managers, understanding this aversion is crucial when introducing new features or product updates. Despite best intentions customers might resist changes that disrupt their habitual usage or create uncertainty – even when these changes offer clear improvements or potential benefits. This reluctance can negatively impact customer feedback and satisfaction because the change is perceived as a threat rather than an opportunity, despite significant change efforts.
One helpful point of reference for managing change aversion is recognizing that the degree of aversion is not uniform. Organizational change studies show that people feel more averse to changes imposed upon them (such as being assigned new tasks) than to changes they self-initiate (like managing their own time differently). This highlights the importance of agency in the change process. When employees or customers feel involved or have some control, their resistance diminishes.
The potential benefits of understanding and addressing change aversion are profound. Company leaders who communicate transparently about what changes mean, acknowledge possible losses, and provide support and resources can create an environment where people feel safer to engage with change. This approach can be extended to personal lives, for example, in maintaining new year’s resolutions where individuals face their own internal resistance rooted in loss aversion to giving up old habits or comforts.
Moreover, energetic speeches or inspirational messaging via emails can sometimes fail to overcome change aversion if they neglect the underlying psychological resistance. Instead, effective change management embraces empathy and addresses the emotional loss individuals perceive. This understanding is particularly vital for product managers relying on customer feedback to refine changes, as they must balance the introduction of innovation with the human tendency to resist disruption.
In summary, loss aversion explains why change feels threatening and why resistance often arises despite good intentions and clear advantages of the new change. By acknowledging the psychological concept of change aversion and its individual variability, organizations and individuals can better design, communicate, and implement changes that minimize resistance and maximize acceptance and satisfaction.
This nuanced understanding provides a valuable toolkit for navigating change in both organizational settings and personal lives, helping transform resistance into openness and enabling progress despite the natural human tendency toward aversion to loss.
Lots of golden nuggets of wisdom takeaways for change practitioners from the man who spent 30+ years working for Intel researching about people behaviour and how they operate in social and technological environments.
Stay tuned for the full recording.
Why do people oppose change?
People often oppose change due to change aversion, a psychological tendency where individuals fear losing what they already possess. This resistance is rooted in the discomfort of uncertainty and potential negative outcomes. Understanding this can help leaders implement strategies to ease transitions and foster acceptance within teams.
Traditionally in change management, there are key ‘events’ that we pin our change strategy on when it comes to getting users to use a new system. These include town halls, leader-led team sessions, and training sessions. We anticipate that after these events that users will come onboard and that all is well. After this we can leave the user and our job is completed.
Unfortunately this is not the case.
User communication and training are only a few steps along a process where many other steps need to occur to achieve the ultimate outcome of full user adoption. We need to look holistically at the whole system and the various players that contribute to the users’ full adoption.
These include:
User capability
User motivation
User capacity
Senior manager buy-in
Manager buy-in
Communication and awareness
Measurement and reinforcement
Strategic alignment
So you can see that all of these are examples of potential levers that need to be pulled to get the outcome.
Here is an example of the initial onboarding journey for The Change Compass. What onboarding journey do you use?
As a first step in understand the change, change management practitioners usually classify different change impacts into people, process, technology, and customer. There is a great effort and focus placed on describing exactly what the impact of change is from a project or program perspective as a part of the change management plan. The impact analysis can include the processes changes, critical behaviours, as well as how different the new technology and new process is going to be compared to the current process.
However, adopting a user-centric view of change impact (versus a project team’s view) is critical in driving successful change.
Often what is seen as impact as felt by various job roles can be very very different from what is experienced by the end-user as a part of the current state. In order to drive towards the benefits of the change, we need to take into consideration any negative thoughts, support system, employee morale, mindset, and performance review processes for those stakeholders impacted by the change. Let’s take a few examples.
When a project is ‘rolled out’. There are can be a lot of different impacted audience factors to consider. These can include:
Location
Role
Gender
Digital fluency
Age
Length of service
Team size
Availability of support staff
Availability of effective 2-way communication platforms
Effective learning and development processes in place
Functional skill sets
So depending on how these organizational change factors determine the impact of the change initiative on groups of individuals, identified specific impacts can be different. In the change impact assessment process, these should be carefully teased out and identified explicitly. Even how we express the names of the impacts should consider how the changes are perceived.
For example, is an impact ‘Team Leader briefing team members about the new process’ or ‘Weekly team meeting to discuss new process changes’? The initial wording is more focused on the new process, whereas the latter one illustrates that there can be various changes discussed in the meeting. So as a result, practitioners need to be open to the environment in which their messages will be delivered and through this better position and clarify the meaning of the change from the team’s perspective. E.g. can this change be delivered as a bundle with other process changes?
In a recent example, a person is understood by the organisation to be undergoing 6 separate initiatives each with their various impacts. Each initiative has fleshed out the various project impacts and these are listed and planned explicitly. However, this is from the organisation’s perspective. In fact, what the individual is undergoing is quite different.
There are changes that the team or division is undergoing that are not always taken into consideration such as people or team changes. On top of this there are also seasonal workload impacts from the likes of end of financial year, audits or pre-holiday season workload. On top of this, there are also various Covid considerations to take into account – the mother of all changes at the moment. Lockdown and social distancing have profound impacts on individuals leading to physical and psychological health impacts.
How a Major Global Financial Services Firm Boosted Business Performance Through The Change Compass
When organisations embark on a change program, the conversation typically starts with data — data to help understand change, inform decisions, and track progress. But as illustrated by the journey of a major global financial services firm, real business value is achieved when that data becomes the catalyst for a fundamental shift in how change is managed, governed, and embedded into daily business.
Within just one year of using The Change Compass, this firm elevated its change management practice to become a critical driver of strategic decision-making, operational excellence, and business performance improvement.
Let’s explore the four areas where the greatest value was realised — and how your organisation can benefit from a similarly holistic approach.
1. Optimising performance through change portfolio management
Many organisations struggle with visibility: too often, change initiatives happen in silos, leading to undetected risks, duplicative efforts, and suboptimal resource usage. The Change Compass changed that paradigm by allowing leaders to visualise the full spectrum and complexity of ongoing and upcoming changes across the business.
Key outcomes included:
Clear visibility of change complexity: Leaders understood not just the number of initiatives but also their interactions, overlaps, capacity required, and cumulative impacts.
Real-time risk identification: Delivery risks became evident early, enabling proactive mitigation and adjustments.
Strategic prioritisation and sequencing: With improved transparency, change teams could optimise the order of initiatives, manage dependencies, and ensure critical projects were staffed and resourced.
Informed resource planning: Accurate data replaced gut feel, driving more precise allocations of people and budget.
Insight: For many organisations, these benefits translate into fewer unexpected disruptions, smoother implementations, less “change fatigue” for staff, and higher project success rates.
2. Powering change governance with actionable insights
Historically, change teams often struggled to earn a “seat at the table” when major business decisions were made. With The Change Compass, this financial services firm embedded change management as a strategic partner, not an afterthought.
Tangible improvements included:
Change team at decision-making forums: The change team now contributed concrete, data-driven insights alongside the PMO and executive/business leadership.
Integrated insights across functions: Data from The Change Compass connected the dots between initiatives, allowing different teams to align efforts and avoid costly missteps.
Value delivered: This meant better-aligned priorities, more robust business cases for investment, and consistent progress reporting to executives, instilling greater confidence at all levels of the business.
3. Pivoting the Change Practice
True change maturity is not just about delivering projects; it’s about growing the organisation’s ability to manage change as an ongoing capability. Using The Change Compass, the firm shifted from a reactive, project-by-project approach to building a strong, influential change culture.
Results included:
Strategic partnering skills: Change leaders became trusted advisors to the business, not just project facilitators.
Community building: A sense of shared mission and ownership emerged among those involved in change, breaking down silos and fostering peer support.
Influence and credibility: The change function established itself as a go-to resource for insight, guidance, and innovation.
Broader benefit: Over time, this led to more consistent adoption of new ways of working, higher engagement, and accelerated pace of transformation.
4. Developing strategic change capability
Finally, the journey was not just about fixing today’s pain points – it was about future-proofing the organisation. By centring decisions on solid data, The Change Compass helped this firm systematically level up its change maturity.
Major advances included:
Data-driven prioritisation: Clarity on what matters most, reducing wasteful activity and focusing on business-critical shifts.
Partnership between business and PMO: Rather than working in isolation, both functions now collaborated with a common understanding of priorities, impacts, and trade-offs.
Foundation for continuous improvement: Ongoing education, supported by real-world analytics, equipped leaders at every level to steer change strategically.
Enduring value: Through this approach, change management became an integral part of the business’s DNA, enabling smarter, faster responses to both market opportunities and challenges.
Why The Change Compass Delivers Real Results
The experience of this global financial services firm illustrates why The Change Compass is not just a tool – it’s a transformational enabler. Organisations using The Change Compass typically report:
Reduced business performance disruptions
Greater alignment between change, operations, and strategy
Improved staff engagement and reduced change fatigue
Faster realisation of business value from new initiatives
By illuminating the complex web of change, reducing uncertainty, and embedding data-driven insights into everyday business, The Change Compass doesn’t just help organisations “manage change” – it helps them excel through change.
Are you ready to turn change from a headache into a competitive advantage? Discover how The Change Compass can help your business unlock its full potential.
If you’d like to explore these outcomes in detail or get a tailored consultation, contact us today. Let’s accelerate your change journey together.
On Google,, the 2nd most searched term in change management is ‘change management process’. Users are keen to understand a standard formula that they can apply to manage any change. Most users are looking for something simple, and clear, and lay out a step-by-step process that describes what they need to do to manage change.
Managing change is no longer the arena for change practitioners. The field of change management has grown in such leaps and bounds in the past 20 years that most leadership concepts now have a section on change management. Nearly all large 1st and 2nd tier consulting firms have a change management practice, even the likes of McKinsey, BCG,, and Bain.
Around us, we frequently see change management being mentioned. Change is even a visible tagline for the marketing campaign for lots of organizations. Accenture’s marketing tagline in 2021 is “Let there be change”. The Motto for The University of Technology Sydney is “Think. Change. Do”.
What are the common change management processes?
Prosci is one of the most known change processes, especially for those located in the United States. Change First has a ‘PCI’ (People-Centered Implementation) model. Then there is John Kotter’s 8 steps for leading change. What all the models have in common is the initial engagement and planning, followed by change implementation, ending with a transition and sustaining phase.
Companies like having one change process to follow.
Most organizations with a change management practice will have, as part of their offering, one change management process for all practitioners/managers to follow.
Why is that?
A common language to talk about managing change so that different stakeholders can refer to the same language, especially those who are not changing practitioners. Creating terms that are easily understood by stakeholders within the company makes sense.
Ensure new change contractors adhere to “the way of doing things” in managing change within the organization. This is often a big complaint, that a new contractor will bring with him/her new ways of doing things, many of which may not gel well within the particular organization.
Create a minimum level of expected quality in managing change so that at least the ‘minimum’ is carried out and that there isn’t anything obvious that is left out. This is especially important for project teams who may not know what change managers do and what outputs they should be working on.
Prosci’s ADKAR model, a framework focusing on five key elements—Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement—that individuals need to successfully navigate change.
John Kotter’s 8 steps model for leading change, providing a roadmap for organizations to effectively manage change, from creating a sense of urgency to anchoring changes in the company culture.
So what is wrong with using a change management process?
Not one change process may be relevant for all cases Change management processes and concepts are good as general references to guide the change practitioner in baselining and learning the key steps that are critical in establishing a good change outcome. No change management process can suit every company and every type of change. This is why it is a good idea to leverage a diverse range of change processes for change managers who are starting out in the industry. Different change processes may cover different areas, therefore provide a synergistic range of references.
For example, John Kotter’s 8 steps of leading change are great for all levels of leaders and team managers as the model is focused on managers leading groups of people through change. On the other hand, Prosci’s ADKAR model is more suitable for a project context where there are a series of activities over several project phases to lead impacted stakeholders through the change.
Also, some change processes may not be applicable for all change scenarios. For example, the famous ‘change curve’ or the Kubler-Ross model of grief and loss. For some reason, this model has been applied so much within a change context that a lot of business people expect that the ‘change curve’ will always occur.
This is absolutely false. In the change curve, there is a prescribed process of shock, denial, frustration, and depression. There are not many change scenarios in which large groups of people go through these emotions. Examples include large-scale restructuring involving retrenchments. However, for standard process changes, technology upgrades, or new product launches, it is very rare that you will see this process being applicable at all.
Blindly following the process One of the biggest dangers and risks of following a change process is not to know when to deviate from the process. This may especially be the case for less experienced change practitioners. The outcome of blindly following the process can mean that the change actually does not happen and the change dial is not moved at the end.
What I often see from change managers who blindly follow the process is a change plan that contains a series of generic activities such as stakeholder engagement, communication, and then launch. Often in these cases, there isn’t a deep understanding of what the change involves from the perspectives of impacted employees. What it means to them may be more than just meeting informational needs. There could be subconscious attachments or preferences/habits that are hard to break.
An analysis of the perceptions and history of changes experienced by those impacted by change is critical. What you may uncover is potential anxieties, expectations, habits, and misunderstanding of what the change involves. This may be ignored by popular change processes.
Change processes may not be linear Experienced change practitioners have seen this. Often what is planned on paper does not actually pan out to be the case. Most change processes follow a scenario where everything goes well. But for complex changes, there are often mishaps or obstacles.
For example:
Key stakeholder groups were not identified upfront and the delay in engaging with them causes overall project delays and stakeholder complications.
Feedback from stakeholders is that the initial messaging was not clear enough and did not reach all groups. Another round of communications and engagement campaign is required to reset expectations.
Learning content was too long and did not sufficiently match employee expectations, thereby resulting in lower completion rates.
After the project rollout, as soon as resources were pulled out of the project team after go-live, adoption rates dived, resulting in little benefits achieved.
In many of these cases described above, the change practitioner needs to repeat certain processes, go back to previous steps, or even split stakeholders with some progressing further in the change process than others.
Following a process may inhibit experimentation One of the core aspects of agile ways of working in implementing change is experimentation. We see teams from development and marketing constantly experiment and learn to evolve into a solution that meets business objectives. In change management, there is little practice in experimentation, even though this is such a core part of agile.
Blindly following the process
One of the reasons could be that change practitioners are used to following a prescribed change process and not used to experimenting with their change approach. Instead, most rely on previous experience or what others have done in other change initiatives. Despite this, there are many good reasons for experimenting change approaches, especially for large/complex change initiatives.
Potential experiments can include:
Communication positioning
Leader storyline for the rationale of the change
Training content
Change measurement
Impact assessment design
Townhall design
Behavior reinforcement and incentives
Not sufficiently emphasizing the importance of measurement Measurement is one of the most important aspects of managing change. Without knowing exactly the outcome of each of the activities we are executing how do we know that we are in the right trajectory? Also, measuring our change intervention ensures that we have the exact gauge on how effective the interventions are, and also where the stakeholders are along the journey. If we’ve not had any complaints or ‘noise’ does not mean that all is well and that the change will take place.
How are you measuring your changes so that you understand where your stakeholders are transitioning to?
Future Trends: Discuss emerging trends and innovations in the field of change management, such as the integration of artificial intelligence, agile methodologies, or digital transformation initiatives. Providing insights into future directions can help readers stay ahead of the curve and adapt their change management strategies accordingly.
In addition to established methodologies, the future of change management is being shaped by cutting-edge technologies and innovative approaches that are revolutionizing how organizations navigate transitions. One of the most exciting developments is the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into change management processes. AI-powered analytics can provide deep insights into organizational dynamics, predicting potential challenges and offering personalized interventions to drive successful change outcomes.
Furthermore, the rise of agile methodologies is transforming traditional change management practices. Agile principles emphasize adaptability, collaboration, and iterative progress, enabling organizations to respond rapidly to evolving market conditions and stakeholder needs. By embracing agile frameworks, change leaders can foster a culture of continuous improvement and empower teams to embrace change as a catalyst for innovation.
Moreover, digital transformation initiatives are reshaping the landscape of change management. As businesses undergo digital transformations to stay competitive in today’s rapidly evolving digital economy, change management becomes increasingly intertwined with technology adoption and organizational agility. Leaders must navigate complex ecosystems of interconnected systems, processes, and stakeholders, leveraging digital tools and platforms to drive seamless transitions and sustainable change.
Incorporating these emerging trends into their change management strategies, organizations can position themselves at the forefront of innovation, driving successful transformations that propel them toward future growth and success.
