Navigating change - with your people at the core
The transformations that succeed are the ones people were able to make their own, not the ones that moved fastest. Very often, organizations already have their strategy. We come in to help you take care of the people side of it, so that your human component becomes your greatest asset in navigating the change.
Your organization is ready to roll out the change, and you sense you need a little extra support to make it happen. You already have the strategy and the tactics, so you're not looking for someone to tell you what to do from scratch, and that's great.
There are many change management models, and you have most likely already chosen the one you want to work with. What we do is help you roll it out in real life, with your people, in the field. We work on both sides: fine-tuning the plan based on what is alive in the organization, and coaching the people moving through it, one at a time or as a team, from the management team to the team leaders.
Change is both managed and lived. With different tools, we create a safe space for expression of fear and needs, align energies, and help teams move through transitions together. Further together.
Tailored engagement
- Tailored change support plan
- Group and/or individual sessions as needed
What we often hear
"Our team leaders already have plenty on their shoulders."
"Supporting everyone individually is going to cost too much time and money."
These are fair concerns. A transformation already stretches everyone, and support can look like one more workstream piled on top. What we see in practice is the reverse: the time not spent on people early comes back later as resistance, missed deadlines, and people leaving. Working with what is alive in a team is usually faster than working around it.
"We can feel the fear and the resistance, but we don't know how to address it. Even for our management team, this transition means a lot of uncertainty."
Resistance is information. It marks the place where something real is at stake for someone, and it rarely dissolves because the plan gets explained one more time. We start by understanding what sits underneath it, including with the people who oppose the change. And we don't assume the management team stands on the other side of it: leaders carrying a transition often hold as much uncertainty as everyone else, with less room to say so. That is frequently where we begin.
Models that inspire our approach
Many change management tools exist. These are the closest with our way of handling change with a very hands-on approach.
Theory U · Otto Scharmer
Slowing down at the start, so the change isn't just the old answer in new packaging.
Theory U maps deep change as a U-shaped journey: coming down one side we suspend the reflex to act, observe the situation as it really is, and sense it from perspectives other than our own. At the base, in what Scharmer calls presencing, we let go of the certainties that belonged to what is ending and listen for what wants to emerge. Coming up the other side we crystallize an intention and prototype small, concrete steps. This is what keeps a transformation from being designed by three people in a room and then announced to everyone else.
WIIFM · "What's in it for me?"
The question everyone is asking silently. Answer it, or lose the room.
Every person facing a change runs the same private calculation: what does this mean for me, my work, my standing, my day? WIIFM is the discipline of answering that question explicitly and honestly for each group affected, including when the honest answer is difficult, rather than communicating only the organization's rationale. Change communication that speaks solely of strategy and synergies leaves everyone to fill the silence with their own worst guess.
The Bridges Transition Model · William Bridges
Change happens on a date. Transition takes as long as it takes.
Bridges draws a distinction that saves a lot of projects: change is external and situational: the new structure, the new system, the go-live date. Transition is the internal, psychological process people go through to come to terms with it. The model has three phases: an Ending (letting go of what was, including status, certainty, and a familiar identity), the Neutral Zone (disorienting and often unproductive, but also where new ways of working get invented), and the New Beginning (genuine acceptance and renewed energy). You can announce a change; you have to lead a transition. The Neutral Zone is where most transformations are quietly lost. wmbridges.com →
ADKAR · Prosci
A diagnostic for why a change is stuck, and which piece is missing.
ADKAR holds that change happens one person at a time, through five building blocks in sequence: Awareness of why the change is needed, Desire to take part in it, Knowledge of how to change, Ability to put it into practice, and Reinforcement to make it stick. Its real value is diagnostic. When something stalls, ADKAR tells you where: a team that resists is rarely short on Knowledge. More often Desire was never built, and no amount of additional training will fix that.
Change that people carry
Let's talk about the transformation ahead and truly put your people at the center.
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