How to Solve Common Change Management Problems

These are the most common change challenges change managers have brought up over the years in our workshops, and more importantly how you can use the 5 Universals to solve them.

We can't seem to create enough urgency to get people to change

Urgency is in the eye of the beholder. What would happen if we focused on creating shared purpose over creating false urgency?

We just can't get people to buy-in to the change.

We're not selling used cars. What would happen if we did change with people and not at them?

We just can't get people to read the &%ing comms!

We're not spreading propaganda. What would happen if we enabled meaningful dialogue instead of blasting people with newsletters?

We executed the plan, on-time, and on-budget, but nothing's changed.

Standards work on the assembly line, not in change management. What would happen if we started experimenting our way through change?

People are resisting change, we need to overcome that.

Resistance is data. What would happen if we got curious instead of furious?

How can we use the 5 Universals of Change in Change Management?

Think of these as universal, not principles. Principles and values are personal. Change methods and frameworks can't have values and principles because those are human elements.

That's why we called them "universals." Everyone can understand them, much in the same way everyone understands that if a new neighbour moves in next-door you don't need to Google "five step best practises to ensure successful ROI with new neighbour."

You simply walk over with a small gift and introduce yourself. Everybody knows how to do that.

Everybody knows how to manage change, but sometimes we forget to bring ourselves to work and we stand our professional representative instead.

5 Tips for Using the 5 Universals of Change

Creating Purpose: Use a movie poster , or future-spective to help align people towards a common vision.

Meaningful Dialogue: Run a Lean Coffee session, properly, instead of using a scripted town-hall designed for optics.

Co-Creation: Facilitate a Change Canvas workshop. Pro tip: Each box on the canvas might be its own meeting with different facilitated activities. The conversation matters, the canvas simply holds the output.

Experimentation: Sometimes the goal is to learn something , not necessarily to get to an outcome.

Response: People respond to change at different rates and intensities. Thank you Jerry Weinburg! What we see is a response , not resistance, get curious, not furious.

Maybe We Need a Behaviour Change!

There's plenty of chatter about how we're the experts, and how we need to get others to change their beliefs and behaviours.

Maybe it's the other way around. Maybe we're the ones who need to shift our thinking and leave that traditional step-by-step approach created by sales people before the internet existed where is belongs, in the museum.

Have you used the 5 Universals of Change? How? What questions do you have? Drop them below!