3 mistakes you're making about your own Change Management capability

When most people learn what Change Management really is, they realise: they’ve pretty much been doing it already.

Change Management isn’t rocket science. It’s simply: “Moving people from doing things in one way to doing things in a new way through communications, training and business readiness in order to realise the business benefits of the change.” 

If you’ve had to change, improve, create or launch a new process, system, tool, initiative, project, way of doing something, way of working, brand, product, event, training, culture, KPI, or like… anything that anyone does in a workplace, then you’ve been doing Change Management. 

In fact, when I went for my first Change role, I had to have the hiring manager convince ME that I was ready to move to Change. I’d: 

• planned, organised and launched marketing promotions
• managed stakeholders, suppliers and customers
• implemented new productivity and training tools for Marketing teams
• developed process improvements for Sales teams
• delivered new approaches for compliance and reporting
• and hosted and run events. 

All skills and activities you totally have to do in Change Management. But I still had to ask my manager in the second job interview: “Are you sure I’m ready?” And she was like: “Yes, you’ve been doing Change!”

I’ll bet my bottom dollar that you have, too.

People’s biggest mistake about their own change capability is that they don’t have any.

So now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s go to the next question: have you actually been doing it well?

Here are 3 mistakes that I see when people are trying to convince themselves or others that they are skilled in Change Management:

Mistake #1: Using Change Management jargon to get your point across

Organisational change is complex and complicated. So when you’re talking with leaders and teams who literally have no clue what Change is, using a ton of new terms and terminology is not at all helpful! That’s why I break things down really simply for my LSC students - to show them change isn’t scary, and the simpler you make it, the more effective you’ll be. 

So you might want to:

• Swap “change impacts” to “people risks”, or as one of my Heads of Change called it: “unexpected consequences”.
• Use “get teams ready” instead of “readiness”.
• Avoid the words “adoption” and “sustainability” and just say “getting people on board and using it, now and in the future”. 
• Even the word “engagement” can be replaced with “communication” and “building trust” and “relationships”.
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And if you do want to use Change terms, define them really, really simply. I actually do think it’s worth continuing to use the term “Change Management”, even though so many people are confused about what it actually is (see my previous blog posts here and here). I really believe to make Change mainstream we’ve just got to keep educating people on the value and power of Change and rewriting what it means in the world.

Mistake #2: Relying on Change templates to do the heavy lifting

A rookie mistake I see from lots of newbies and seasoned Changies alike. Having a Change Management template is not the same as having the skill and confidence to have the conversations needed to put the right information in the template.  In fact, that’s why we spend so much time on my free Change Tools Masterclass (register your free spot here - we kick off next week) with live demos on the types of things I ask and think about when filling out a Change template. 

• The value is in the conversation, not the template. 
• The value is in the conversation, not the documentation. 
• The value is in the conversation, not the fancy design. 

All the meaning in Change happens from the interactions you have with stakeholders, leaders and teams - sometimes even your own project! The Change template doesn’t do the heavy lifting, your ability to communicate, build trust, make meaning and solve problems does.

Mistake #3: Forgetting about people

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know that people don’t just change because you tell them to. And they don’t just change because you ask them to. Even if you ask really, really nicely! So it still astonishes me that so many people send out one comms for a new process and expect that to do the trick. Or design an entire technology solution without ever getting the actual end users from the business involved in process mapping, co-design, and testing.

When I was first thinking about moving to Change, I had coffee with a Change Manager in my organisation and explained all the reasons I wanted to move to Change Management: I loved improving processes, implementing new tools, training, variety, challenge, problem solving, organising, meeting deadlines, launches, events. And she said to me: “There’s one thing you haven’t said yet, and that’s ‘people’.”

It’s so easy with Change Management to get caught up in Change Management and forget what it’s all for. The people. 

I actually did care about people and helping them improve their work and lives (I’d just become a coach after all!), but even I forgot what Change is all about. 

And that’s why anyone can lead change. Because the tools, the templates, the jargon, the skills: anyone can learn that stuff. But when you truly, deeply, wholeheartedly care about the experience that people have and want them to feel informed, inspired, confident and ready, your Change capability automatically shines through.

If you’d like to build your change capability in a flash, I’ll be sharing all my tried-and-tested tools and templates plus the contextual understanding of Change Management in my free Change Tools Masterclass. 

We kick off on Tuesday 14 March, so if you haven’t booked your free spot yet - do so ASAP:

CLICK HERE to book your free spot on my Change Tools Masterclass

And people? Yeah - that will be at the heart of it!

Lata xx