My previous post outlined three key elements of successfully preparing and announcing changes in organizations from the perspective of the change author and driver. This post looks at change from the perspective of individuals on the receiving side of the change process — either those affected by the change or those who need to communicate the change to others, often while not having worked on the changes themselves. It explores how individuals can react to changes and focus their efforts and energy to support the change to the benefit of the organization and to foster their own development.

Accepting the change

Some changes are all but straightforward and will affect individuals, for example by changing how they work through rules, policies, or restructuring the organization. Regardless how well prepared, changes will lead to an emotional response and initial resistance. The worst thing you can do is to act immediately and succumb to emotions. The goal is to channel your energy into actions yielding material results. More often than not, you will regret critiquing, rejecting, or questioning change authors before understanding the full extent of the changes and its implications.

While it may not be easy, as first step you need to work towards accepting the change, thus building a foundation for further action. To help you gain some distance, let the change sink in and postpone your reaction to the next day. Afterwards, ensure you understand the communicated change and rationale. Helpful questions for your leader or the person communicating the change may include:

• Any clarification question to the contents of the message.
• What was the trigger for the change? What external factors were at play?
• How will the change benefit the team/company?
• How is my role affected? How am I personally affected?
• From when on are the changes going to be effective from?
• How can feedback be provided?

Noting down the assumptions you had when being presented with the change and contrasting these with the answers you receive, helps you compare your viewpoints. Having a full picture of differing viewpoints will help you in processing the change.

It’s important to note that as a manager and thus member of the leadership team, you are expected to accept the change by default. In cases where you have not worked on the change directly, this may be a more difficult ask. Your task is to discuss any of your concerns and questions with your manager and later commit to the changes and communicate these to others and your team as if you would have worked on these directly.

Providing feedback

When processing the change, a helpful strategy is to formulate and provide feedback. Change authors will appreciate a validation of their assumptions and whether the key points from their communication were received and understood. Further, they may connect you with ongoing efforts supporting the rollout of the change.

You can help by collecting feedback from your peers and sharing it in the form of a summary document. By getting support from others, you reduce the pressure on yourself as you’re not the sole author of the feedback anymore. You also validate your understanding of the changes, though it’s important to be aware of confirmation bias here.

When formulating constructive feedback, you can follow a simple structure. First, highlight what you are addressing (e.g. communication cascade, motivation, measures) and explain how this matches/differs from your viewpoint/experience or point out aspects that potentially were not considered. Finally, express the outcome this has for you or others. Optionally, you can include a suggestion on what can help moving forward. For example: “(…) The change was communicated mainly addressing X, leaving out Y who account for z% of the team. This decreased the mood among Y and made them feel excluded. Moving forward, would it be possible to ensure that Y is included explicitly in any follow-up communication?”

Supporting the change

The next step you can take after internalizing the change and discussing your feedback is participation in the change process. The better you understand (and believe in) the change, the more natural it will be for you to support the change. A good approach to start is by listening to your peers and getting insights on how they perceive the change. You may provide value in helping them understand the change, motivation, or implications of the change. Outlining how you perceive the change and what you see as an opportunity moving forward, will provide them with a different perspective, which they can relate to. You can help your peers to be helpful by outlining where they can support in the change implementation. Getting them involved will increase the buy-in and reduce anxiety for change through active participation.

Here a few practices that may help you in this task:

• Collecting feedback from peers along with suggestions on how to increase understanding and foster buy-in for the strategy.
• Hosting a discussion within the team to form a mutual understanding of the change.
• Volunteering for measures that are accompanying the change rollout.
• Voicing support for the change and showcasing the opportunities it creates for the individuals, team, or organization.

Supporting changes you wish never happened

Surely, you will encounter changes that you are not fond of or such that aren’t in line with your values or beliefs. There is little you can influence when things are decided and already in motion, so be aware of wasting your own energy here.

Instead, you can choose to be forward looking and get involved in future changes of similar type with the aim to correct mistakes that you think have been made. Alternatively, choosing to accept the status quo, you should ask yourself how the you can leverage the changed environment to your benefit. Explore how the changes affect your opportunities. What are things that will be easier? What are things that will not be required anymore? Are there new stakeholders or colleagues you can network with, which may help you achieve your targets?

Next step: driving change

Having supported a change and participated in its implementation gives you good foundations for initiating your own changes. It’s much more fun and impactful to work on a topic that is dear to one’s heart and build one’s own rebel alliance to initiate and lead the change. See my other posts Driving Change for tips on initiating changes and How to communicate major changes for advice on change rollout.

My previous post described challenges with triggering changes bottom-up. This post focuses on three key elements of successfully preparing and announcing changes in organizations from the perspective of the change author and driver. The approach described here is mostly relevant for organizational or process changes.

The difficulty in announcing changes depends on the scope of change, the situation of the affected individuals, and the perceived difference compared to status quo. Diligent preparation and rollout planning for changes is crucial for driving a successful change process. Missing out on planning may lead to diminishing returns, create unnecessary friction, and put additional pressure on the change authors.

When preparing a change, three elements are crucial to consider:

• Set of key changes alongside with reasoning on why these were decided upon and which constraints were taken into account.
• Change map with measures and messages appealing to the needs of those affected by the change and those who will support it.
• Communication approach: announcement vs. communication cascade.

Noting these down serves as an easy way to assess the confidence of change authors in the change and uncover areas that may have been missed out during preparation.

Key changes, reasoning, and constraints

Listing the key changes that are being made and preparing a crisp reasoning for each point helps in verifying the completeness of the scope of change. Capturing the constraints that influenced scope or decisions allows to set the right context as part of the announcement. It also ensures that assumptions about the status quo are validated ahead of proceeding further.

The change map (four quadrants of change)

Every person who is affected by a change is asked to adjust their behavior, which involves learning. Adults learn both on an individual level or collectively with/from their peers. Both ways have an internal and external dimension to it, forming a change map or four quadrants of change. The likelihood of success when rolling out changes is increased when the messages used throughout the communication as well as the additional measures accompanying the change process cover all of the four quadrants:

• mindset/values (internal / individual) — What facts need to be acknowledged about the status quo, values, or beliefs of the individual to ensure the change is easy to understand and relate to? What measures are needed to promote buy-in? What key concerns of individuals need to be addressed in order to explain the reasons for the change, speak to their potential anxiety for change or fear of losing something they had or mastered before?
• behaviors+skills (external / individual) — how are individuals expected to act after the change is announced? What material can they read or interact with in order to learn about the changes? What skills to they need to acquire and what training opportunities are provided? What behaviours would define a successful rollout of the change? Which behaviours should be reinforced and which rather prevented from happening and how?
• cultural (internal / collective) — what support will be provided through changes in culture (or expectations), communities, and means of exchange for those who are affected by the change? How can groups be nudged or empowered to interact and discuss their concerns or understanding of the changes? Who will be the change agents and supporters/promoters?
• systems/processes (external / collective) — what processes or mechanisms will be put in place in order to support the change? Is there a need or opportunity for enforcing the change through process or rule changes? Will there be any mandatory trainings or re-skilling?

Filling out the four dimensions during change preparation ensures coverage of the full spectrum of needs of the target audience (usually the internal dimensions) and organization (usually represented in the external dimensions). A common pitfall is to underinvest in the two quadrants with internal focus on the individual, resulting in merely stating the change and facts. This happens especially if there is external or time pressure or when the authors exhibit excitement and relief for the changes being finally ready to announce. The mindset/values quadrant ensures that care is given to help understanding the state of mind, knowledge, or needs of the target audience. It’s crucial to meet the audience where they are in order to convey a convincing and relatable message, thus reducing friction when the change is announced. Change authors need to be careful to keep a realistic view of the state of knowledge and sentiment within the organization. The longer the preparations take, the more familiar with and convinced they become of the new course, making it rather easy to underestimate the degree of change.

Communication approach

Announcement

The simplest way to roll out a change is to announce it to everyone stating the facts (key changes), either in person or in writing. The bigger and more diverse the audience, the more care is required alongside the announcement text, with aspects prepared in the four quadrants required to be mentioned to increase success.

Regardless how sophisticated and clear the communication will be, there will (almost) always be questions. Including a short FAQ section in the change announcement helps to address anticipated questions upfront. To source these questions, put yourself in the position of the audience and those individuals who are most affected by the change. Try to anticipate what the most controversial or just the obvious reactions will be. To strengthen the set of questions, feedback can be sourced from a few individuals who have not worked on the change or from representatives of the leadership team.

To better structure the conversation around the change, it’s advisable to host a Q&A session and to include an invite in the original announcement. Questions asked during the Q&A should be also added to the FAQ later on.

Communication cascade

It’s common to combine the announcement with the cascade for major or complex changes. There are two types of cascaded rollouts, which differ in the role leadership plays in the change process — a supporting or leading one.

In the first model, the change initiators use dedicated sessions to announce the change to different groups, for example following the organizational hierarchy (following the reporting chain) or its structure (sessions per department). Here, the change authors play a stronger role in the rollout and are supported by leadership.

In the second model, the change is rolled out top-down with leaders owning the change, starting with the first leadership level who then roll it out to their team who communicate the change to the next level, and so on. The FAQ section mentioned above is extended at each level and leaders are supported with additional talking points which help to ensure consistent messaging. The key changes, reasoning, and constraints captured before serve as a base for the talking points and enable leaders to communicate the change as if they had worked on it themselves. Here, it’s also possible to adjust the messaging at every leadership level.

Summary

Depending on the complexity of the change and size of the organization, sufficient time needs to be invested in preparation. How much time to invest is highly contextual and depends on the culture of the organization and the affected individuals. For simple changes, quickly noting the key changes and mapping the key messages onto the four quadrants will help you to tune the content of the change announcement. For complex changes, separating work on the three elements more explicitly is advised. The more changes you will initiate and drive, the better you will be prepared for the next one.

Should you encounter individuals challenging the changes, help them understand what opportunities they have to influence changes and participate in the change process themselves.

Have you ever felt frustrated when you found a problem worth solving but it was not picked up by your colleagues nor supported by your boss? Deep inside you knew you were onto addressing something important, leading to a breakthrough, or just going to have a positive impact on the company, but you failed and don’t know why. This post provides insights on why your ideas may have been rejected along with tips on how to find the right problems to solve.

Why do managers reject your ideas?

Your personal view on the problems that are important will differ from your manager’s view. Your position, role, and size of the company determine your understanding of the strategic goals of a team, department, or organization and influences the easiness of access to relevant, oftentimes strategic information. Therefore, it’s crucial to understand that not all of the problems that you will identify are worth addressing due to a multitude of reasons:

• Approach: The way in which you raised the problem was ineffective. You chose the wrong medium, were too forward and crossed boundaries (e.g. cultural, personal) or just spoke to the wrong person.
• Contracts & regulations: Solving the issue would stand in conflict with the way the company does business due to contractual relationships with customers, the way customers are billed for, or because of regulatory requirements. You may need to build a stronger business case on the positive impacts when addressed, so that the pain points are addressed eventually.
• Cost: Solving the problem would incur too high costs for the company.
• Experience: You’ve joined the team quite recently and/or your manager perceives you as a member of the team who is still learning and trying to understand the mechanics and context of the team. In case you’ve been on the team for a longer time, this may mean that you’re crossing a certain boundary and you should better understand the expectations of your boss, e.g. the areas/problems you should focus on. Also, reflect on the relation with your manager as trust makes a difference.
• Focus: There is another team already working on this challenge and your manager would prefer to keep you focused on the main team’s responsibilities.
• Isolation: You’re the only one that sees this issue and without further support, the idea won’t get further traction.
• Priority: You misunderstood the team’s context and the problem you’re seeing is not worth being solved at this point in time. There may be other opportunities already known that would bring bigger benefits.
• Strategy: Addressing the problem would be in conflict with other, upcoming, more strategic changes you are unaware of. Such changes may be being planned either by your manager or the company.
• Value: It’s unclear what the impact of solving the problem is due to lack of sufficient data points to support your idea.

Understand which problems are important

In order for you to increase chances of a meaningful discussion about the issues you find worth solving, you need a solid understanding of the overall business context and environment. This will help you better showcase the value of resolving the issue to potential supporters. You can start by asking your manager (or other, more senior colleagues) open-ended questions that will help you acquire insights on the big picture and also show the boundaries in which you move in. Here some guiding questions:

• What is the biggest problem in our team that you see is worth addressing? Why?
• I find X annoying/inefficient and would like to help changing that. How could I help finding a solution? Whom in the company would you recommend reaching out to in order to get support?
• I think X is an issue in our company. What’s your opinion? Who is responsible within the company to address such problems? With whom beyond this team could I talk to in order to exchange ideas?
• When would be a good time to address issue X? Why not earlier?
• I have been bringing to you problems that I see as worth solving, but you don’t seem to be interested. Why do you think they’re not worth addressing at this point in time? How would you like me to raise similar issues moving forward?

Get support within the organization

Usually, you’re not the only person in the organization that recognized a problem. You just may be the one that is willing to act. However, this does not mean that you’re alone. You can reach out to your colleagues in order to sound your ideas and verify whether others also have this issue and whether they’re willing to support you. This can be as easy as stating that you work on problem X and asking if someone is interested to help. Having support within the organization is crucial as your peers can provide you more context or help addressing the problem in a different way than you would have.

Bring solutions, not problems

It’s common, especially for less experienced colleagues, to constantly point out problems and deficiencies. Over time, this will lead to fatigue on both sides. You will be frustrated because the problems you raised don’t resonate with your manager and for your boss as well, because you’re likely not the only one to talk about problems. If you never approach your boss with ideas on how to address the problem, you risk being perceived as a complainer and your voice is likely to be ignored over time. Especially from senior team members, managers expect solution suggestions to be brought forward for discussion. Coming with concrete proposals and asking for feedback, context that you may have missed, or for guidance how to proceed in bringing the solution to life will dramatically change the type of discussion you will be having and increase your chances for success. To be on the safe side, you can first validate the idea and come back with a solution proposal only afterwards, which will allow you to focus your attention on the important problems.

It’s not the problem — it’s the timing

Large organizations are complex systems composed of people. Though a stable state of the organization is not desired, there is a limit to the total amount of change an organization can simultaneously cope with. It may well be, that the problem you found or your idea how to solve a problem is brilliant, but the timing is just not right. This may depend on the company’s current strategic goals, the environment (e.g. market conditions), other ongoing structural or cultural changes, or even the management team itself. In such situations, you can either wait for the circumstances to change or try to vastly reduce the scope of the change and thus aim to make small, incremental steps forward instead.

What if all attempts fail?

Surely, the environment or organization you’re in may not be ready to address the issues you’re raising or for the changes you’re willing to drive. If you feel that you’ve been trying for too long and all your attempts failed, you may be better off by changing the environment to another one with a different mindset that is more open for change. This may be a different team, department, or even another organization.

Further reading

This post focused mostly on providing you more understanding on why your ideas would not resonate with others and contains simple guidance on finding the right problems to solve. However, this is just the first step of driving a change. To succeed, you must learn how to define a problem, support it with sufficient context and data, and be able to showcase the impact of solving it.

If you’re more broadly interested in change management, check out Rebels at Work: A Handbook for Leading Change from Within for ideas on building an alliance for change within your organization or Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas for an extensive collection of patterns and approaches for driving change.

See also my other posts with advice on Communicating major changes and tips for Accepting and supporting changes for individuals.