There is no shortage of change management frameworks. Kotter's eight steps, Prosci's ADKAR model, McKinsey's 7-S framework. They are all useful as maps. The problem is that maps describe the territory but do not tell you what it feels like to walk through it. After twelve years of supporting organisations through significant change, the things that matter most are rarely the things that feature prominently in the frameworks.

The communication problem is almost always underestimated

Every change programme includes a communication plan. Most of them are inadequate. The typical failure is to communicate the what and the when but not the why, or to communicate the why once at the beginning and assume it has been heard. People need to understand the reasoning behind a change, and they need to hear it more than once, in more than one format, from more than one person. The leaders who are closest to the change are usually the worst judges of how much communication is enough.

Resistance is information, not obstruction

The instinct when people resist a change is to manage the resistance. The more useful instinct is to understand it. Resistance usually contains information about something the change programme has not adequately addressed: a legitimate concern about implementation, a group whose interests have not been considered, or a flaw in the logic of the change itself. Treating resistance as obstruction means losing that information, and the change programme is worse for it.

The implementation gap

The gap between a decision being made and a change being embedded is where most change programmes fail. The decision is made at the leadership level, the communication goes out, and then the organisation is expected to change its behaviour. What is missing is the sustained attention to implementation: the regular check-ins, the early identification of where the change is not landing, and the willingness to adjust the approach when the evidence suggests it is not working.

What middle managers actually need

Middle managers are the people who translate organisational change into daily practice. They are also the people who are most often under-supported during a change programme. They are expected to implement a change they may not fully understand, answer questions from their teams they may not be able to answer, and maintain performance through a period of disruption. Investing in middle manager capability and communication during a change programme is one of the highest-return activities available.

The role of an outside perspective during implementation

One of the most useful things an outside consultant can do during a change programme is to be the person who tells the leadership team what is actually happening in the organisation, as distinct from what the leadership team believes is happening. The gap between these two things is often significant, and it tends to widen as the change programme progresses and the leadership team becomes more invested in its success.

If you are in the middle of a significant change and feel like the implementation is not keeping pace with the plan, we are happy to talk through what we typically see and whether our Change Programme Support engagement might be useful.