The Real Cost of Change

In any managerial space, there’s going to be talk about change. Sometimes this is recognizing the fear of it that many people hold, but more often, the common wisdom is that organizations need to evolve or die. Organizations set up entire departments for the purpose of facilitating change – as well as buying books, putting people in change-management roles , and revising org charts — all in the name of progress.

People are, naturally, surprised when all of this work often doesn’t result in real, meaningful change.

There was one instance where I was involved in driving change in an organization that desperately needed it — well, there has been more than one instance of that in my career, but there’s one in particular I want to discuss. The organization desperately needed to revamp the way it went to market, so my team and I created a lot of great, thorough strategy documents and did a lot of leg work on developing what the new approach should be and communicating that throughout the organization.

And well, then not much else happened. I walked into the conference room and saw a message on the whiteboard that said: “Culture eats strategy for lunch.” This, to me, is reflective of the reticence to change that you can usually find at any level of a business. A fear of the unknown drives a lot of this fear, but I would challenge that a greater portion stems from personal insecurities about one’s ability to adapt and/or skepticism about having the time to adapt.

I saw this clearly while working with an organization recently that wanted to add in new software and update some old processes to improve their lacking customer service. These were not dramatic changes, but upon trying to implement them, I immediately got a lot of pushback from folks along the frontline, mostly to the tune of, “I’m too busy! I don’t have time to make this faster!”

That thought really struck me: I don’t have time to get better or faster at this because I’m busy. I reflected a lot on the resistance to change and how to give people the space, emotionally and practically, to enact positive changes. 

The natural conclusion of this pondering is, of course, that I’m going to start tinkering with things. And I encourage you to do the same in your own life — ask yourself, “Why aren’t I where I want to be? What’s the thing getting in the way of allowing me to make changes?”

For the purposes of this thought experiment, I’ll assume that you’ve already done the foundational work of developing a clearly articulated vision and reason for why the change is necessary. Logically, this probably feels like it should result in change. But even with a clear vision and proper tools at the ready, how are you giving people time and tools to make these adaptations? 

Do you bring in extra help? That can take some of the work off your peoples’ plates while they adjust, but it also scares people and gives them the impression that they might be due for replacing, especially during a time of larger change. Or maybe do you bring in trainers instead, although you run the risk of it being another do-nothing training session passed down by higher-ups that doesn’t result in a meaningful difference in daily operations?

However you do it, you have to find a way to shift the workload without stopping cash flow. And frankly, that can get pricey. You might consider starting a change in the culture as an investment, just like buying new hardware. Your goal, then, is to make that investment in a way that will yield observable results.

Because what I know for sure is that just telling people that they have to change doesn’t cut it. I’m guessing that you’ve been up against resistance to change before as well. On my part, I’m going to make those investments in giving people the space and comfort to make the changes that the organization needs to see. My hypothesis is that this will lead to a lot less pushback and I’ll see a nice return on my investment in facilitating these changes.

Or maybe I’ve misidentified the issue and people will be just as averse to change as ever. The only real way to know is to run my tests and figure it out.

One curious thing about management introducing new tools and toys for their employees is that, undeniably, not all change is good. At the same time, no change is rarely the right answer. Good management, though, is having the wisdom to listen to your people, look at the market, and try to understand which changes your organization needs to make to keep apace with the world. That is more of a constantly moving goal than a destination one reaches, but I still think it’s worth striving for.