Summary

Change doesn’t happen when people understand the vision. It happens when they behave differently.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how often organizations set out to change something and, despite good intentions, end up right back where they started.

In many cases, the plan is clear. The communication is strong. People even agree that change is needed.

And yet, a few months later, very little feels different.

Change is hard. It’s difficult enough for a person to change, let alone dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people working for the same company. It requires a collective and nearly unanimous agreement to endure temporary discomfort in the name of a better future.  Countless well-intentioned change projects have died quiet deaths somewhere between vision and execution.

In my experience, change doesn’t fail because leaders don’t know what to do. It fails because the underlying behaviors that drive the organization don’t actually change.

In my experience, certain conditions must be true for change to stick.

Does leadership hold the line when resistance shows up?

The larger the change, the more executive persistence is required. I’ve learned over the years that even in the most dysfunctional cultures, there are people who are benefiting from the dysfunction. These people will challenge any mention of change, often loudly.  They are locked into their old behavior and don’t want to give it up. The CEO and Senior Leaders must stand firm when it comes.

Do managers actually reinforce the change in real conversations?

Likewise, manager courage is needed because managers are the ones who have to deal with the change-resistant folks face-to-face. They have to deliver a message that will be unpopular with some and deal with the blowback, all while remaining enthusiastic and modeling what positive change will look like for the staff who are excited about it.

Have we thought through how this plays out in real behavior?

Knowing the stakes, careful preparation is needed. This includes gameplanning second-, third-, and fourth-order consequences of the change (leaders often don’t think far enough downstream and are blindsided when consequences arrive) and the anticipated positive and negative reactions of those involved in implementing the change. There is no good reason to be surprised by any of this.

Are we reinforcing the same message over time?

Constant communication stirs excitement about the vision and provides leaders with a channel to gauge reactions. It’s important to both be enthusiastic about the change and straightforward about any perceived challenges or limitations. Employees know real-life conditions that executives might not understand, so their feedback is crucial. Lessons learned here can be fed back into earlier steps, with adjustments clearly communicated.

Have we shown people exactly what to do differently?

At this point, change is still an idea. It is turned into behavior through high-quality, specific training. For change to succeed, people must succeed. Staff implementing the change must be shown specifically how to replace the old (comfortable) behavior with new behavior. The better and more comprehensive the training is, the less discomfort will be associated with the new behavior. Skimping on training (or failing to involve the right people) is a sure way to sabotage change at the last minute.

In most organizations, the plan changes first. The behavior changes last, if at all. This helps explain why change doesn’t happen when people understand the vision. It happens when they consistently behave differently.

Change isn’t easy, but it is predictable. People tend to return to what feels familiar unless the environment consistently pulls them in a different direction.

The work of leadership is not just setting the vision. It’s shaping the conditions that make new behavior more likely than old behavior, even when the old behavior feels easier.