Not every change fails because people don’t want to change.
For years, I have participated in projects that, from a business perspective, were extremely well prepared.
There was a schedule.
There was a budget.
There was a project sponsor.
There were goals and success metrics.
And yet, after implementation, the organization would ask itself the same question.
Why don’t people want to use it?
Over time, I noticed that the answer very rarely had to do with the people themselves.
Much more often, the problem originated much earlier – during the design of the change.
The hardest part of implementing change isn’t convincing people to adopt a new solution. The hardest part is designing the change in a way that allows them to identify with it.
A good business decision does not always mean a well-designed change
Organizations make decisions for specific reasons.
They want to increase efficiency.
Streamline processes.
Reduce costs.
Implement new technologies.
That is perfectly natural.
The problem arises when we assume that just because a decision is justified from a business standpoint, people will automatically deem it appropriate from the perspective of their daily work.
More often than not, this isn’t the case.
Not because they don’t understand the organization’s goals.
But because no one has shown them how this decision will impact their own reality.
People don’t have to make the decisions. They need to understand what influence they have over them.
One of the most common misconceptions is the belief that engaging employees means handing over the decision-making power to them.
That is not the same thing.
In many projects, the most important business decisions are made much earlier and there is no need to debate them all over again.
However, you can collaboratively design the way they are implemented.
This is exactly where organizations stand to gain the most.
In my projects, I have repeatedly observed that the exact same change only started working when people felt they were participating in its creation, rather than just being handed a ready-made solution.
Often, the decision itself remained unchanged.
What changed was the people’s experience.
From being mere recipients of the change, they became its co-creators.
The difference between informing and engaging
Imagine you are buying an apartment.
The developer shows you the finished design.
They inform you where the kitchen will be, where the bedroom is, and how the utilities will be laid out.
Finally, they ask if everything is clear.
This is good communication.
But does it mean you had any influence on the design?
Not necessarily.
It is very similar with organizational changes.
You can inform people about a change extremely well.
Yet, that still doesn’t mean they will feel like a part of it.
Resistance is often information, not a problem
In organizations, we often talk about resistance to change.
Far less often do we ask where this resistance stems from.
Perhaps the employees see risks that the project team has overlooked.
Perhaps they don’t understand the purpose of the change.
Or perhaps they simply don’t believe that the organization will keep the promises made at the beginning of the project.
Resistance very rarely appears without a reason.
More often than not, it’s a signal that somewhere along the line, there was a lack of dialogue, transparency, or the opportunity for them to share their own perspective.
Engagement is built much earlier than during training
Many organizations only plan their communication when the project is ready to be rolled out.
There are presentations.
Meetings.
Training sessions.
Informational materials.
These are necessary steps.
However, they cannot replace people’s involvement at earlier stages.
If employees hear about a change for the first time only after all the decisions have already been made, the organization is not building engagement.
It is trying to build acceptance.
Those are two completely different things.
Transparency builds trust more than promises do
Not every decision will be comfortable for employees.
Not every decision will be met with enthusiasm.
This doesn’t mean the organization is losing their trust.
Trust most often disappears when people hear one thing and then witness something completely different later on.
That is why transparency is not about delivering only good news.
It’s about honestly communicating the reasons behind a decision, its potential consequences, and what the organization actually has control over.
Before you ask how to convince people to change…
It is worth asking yourself another question.
At what stage did we invite them to co-create it?
If the answer is: only when everything was already finished, perhaps employee resistance was never the problem in the first place.
The problem arose much earlier.
At the moment the organization designed the change for the people, instead of together with them.