Meet John.

“JOHN” introduced himself to me at a recent training course. John had the title of ‘strategic change leader’ within his company. From certification to ‘advanced’ change management, this was John’s fourth change management training course. Over dinner, John shares with me the investment his company has made in training the managers, employees, and executives in change management best practices.

I almost choked on my glass of wine.

I was astonished at the financial investment his company made in change management training, especially during a global economic crisis!  The rest of our conversation went something like this:

Me: Wow. You’ve invested a lot of time, money, and resources in change management training. Is it making a difference? Are you realizing successful change?

John: (He laughs) Not really. We still struggle with executive support, management getting it, and employee resistance. The change management team rarely gets pulled in early enough in the project.

Me: Why is that?

John: They just don’t get it yet.

Me: Even after all this training and certification?

John: Yeah, even after all this training.

Me: So what approaches are you using to lead change in your organization?

John: We conduct change readiness assessments. We create sponsorship models, communication plans, training plans, resistance management plans. We manage the people side of change.

Me: Sounds like some innovation is needed in your change management strategy.

Then we paused and John sat silently frustrated with his organization’s inability to make changes.

I found it interesting that their approach was to apply assessments and templates to the human-centered process of change. Process and templates serve a purpose; however you can’t templatize your way to real strategy in the absence of critical thinking, intuitive thinking, empathy, and an understanding of human behavior when it comes to change.

I’d suggest that we need to return critical thinking to the center stage of change management and stop ‘managing change’ and start designing change that people want to adopt.

Get the change right, get the design right, and the people will follow.

Design thinking is about accelerating innovation to create better solutions to the challenges facing business and society. It starts with people-what we call human centered design-and applies creative tools, the tools of design, like prototyping, experimentation and storytelling to deliver new breakthrough innovations. Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO and author of Change by Design

Your Turn

What’s your read on designing change, designing ideas, that people understand, talk about, willingly adopt, and even celebrate? If you like this post, please tweet it. Thanks!

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Cheers to a great week!

Melissa