Change Management

70% of change initiatives fail. (And it's rarely because the idea was bad.) Here's what actually kills transformation: You picked the wrong change model for the job. It's like performing surgery with a hammer. Sure, you're using a tool. But it's the wrong one. I've watched brilliant CEOs tank their companies this way: Using individual coaching (ADKAR) for company-wide transformation. Result: 200 people change. 2,000 don't. Running a massive 8-step program for a simple process fix. Result: 6 months wasted. Team exhausted. Nothing changes. Forcing top-down mandates when they needed subtle nudges. Result: Rebellion. Resentment. Resignation letters. Here's what nobody tells you about change: The size of your change determines your approach. Real examples from the field: 💡 Startup pivoting product: → Used Lewin's 3-stage (unfreeze old way, change, refreeze) → 3 months. Clean transition. Team aligned. 💡 Enterprise going digital: → Used Kotter's 8-step process → Created urgency first. Built coalition. Enabled action. → 18 months later: $50M in new revenue. 💡 Sales team adopting new CRM: → Used Nudge Theory → Made old system harder to access → Put new system as browser homepage → 95% adoption in 2 weeks. Zero complaints. The expensive truth: Wrong model = wasted months + burned budgets + broken trust Right model = faster adoption + sustained results + energized teams Warning signs you're using the wrong model: • High activity, low progress • People comply but don't commit • Changes revert within weeks • Energy drops as you push harder • "This too shall pass" becomes the motto Match your medicine to your ailment: Small behavior change? Nudge it. Individual performance? ADKAR it. Cultural shift? Influence it. Full transformation? Kotter it. Enterprise overhaul? BCG it. Stop treating every change like a nail. Start choosing the right tool for the job. Your next change initiative depends on it. Your team's trust demands it. Your company's future requires it. Save this. Share it with your leadership team. Because the next time someone says "people resist change," you'll know the truth: People don't resist change. They resist the wrong approach to change. P.S. Want a PDF of my Change Management cheat sheet? Get it free: https://lnkd.in/dv7biXUs ♻️ Repost to help a leader in your network. Follow Eric Partaker for more operational insights. — 📢 Want to lead like a world-class CEO? Join my FREE TRAINING: "The 8 Qualities That Separate World-Class CEOs From Everyone Else" Thu Jul 3rd, 12 noon Eastern / 5pm UK time https://lnkd.in/dy-6w_rx 📌 The CEO Accelerator starts July 23rd. 20+ Founders & CEOs have already enrolled. Learn more and apply: https://lnkd.in/dwndXMAk

Just out in Harvard Business Review, summary of the Hybrid Experiment results and lessons on how to make hybrid succeed. Experiment: randomize 1600 graduate employees in marketing, finance, accounting and engineering at Trip.com into 5-days a week in office, or 3-days a week in office and 2-days a week WFH. Analyzed 2 years of data. Two key results A) Hybrid and fully-in-office showed no differences in productivity, performance review grade, promotion, learning or innovation. B) Hybrid had a higher satisfaction rate, and 35% lower attrition. Quit-rate reductions were largest for female employees. Four managerial lessons 1) Hybrid needs a strong performance management system so managers don’t need to hover over employees at their desks to check their progress. Trip.com had an extensive performance review process every six months. 2) Coordinate in-office days at the team or company level. Schedule clarity prevents the frustration of coming to an empty office only to participate in Zoom calls. Trip.com coordinated WFH on Wednesday and Friday. 3) Having leadership buy-in is critical (as with most management practices). Trip.com’s CEO and C-suite all support the hybrid policy. 4) A/B test new policies (as well as products) if possible. Often new policies turn out to be unexpectedly profitable. Trip.com made millions of dollars more profits from hybrid by cutting expensive turnover.

Most change models focus on systems, structures, and processes. The ADKAR model reminds us that real change happens through people. Change rarely fails because the strategy or the process is wrong. It fails because the human journey of change is overlooked. People are expected to adopt new ways of thinking and working without being guided through what that actually requires. ADKAR captures that journey in a simple but profound way. It starts with AWARENESS of why change is needed. Without that, people cannot make sense of what is happening. They need to understand the reasons, the purpose, and the implications for their own work. From there comes DESIRE, the inner willingness to support and contribute to the change. This cannot be created through persuasion alone, but through involvement, trust, and meaningful dialogue. KNOWLEDGE follows as people learn what is expected of them and how to do things differently. This is where training, mentoring, and shared learning matter most. Yet knowledge alone is never enough. It must translate into ABILITY, the confidence and skill to actually perform in new ways, supported by clear goals, opportunities to practice, and a system that enables rather than obstructs. Finally, lasting change depends on REINFORCEMENT. New behavior needs to be noticed, encouraged, and recognized until it becomes the new normal. This is where leaders often move on too quickly, assuming the change is complete when people are only halfway through the process. The strength of the ADKAR model lies in its humanity. It treats change not as an event but as a process of learning and adaptation. It shows that organizational change is always a sequence of individual transitions, each of which requires attention, patience, and care. When leaders understand this, they no longer see resistance as a problem to overcome, but as a signal to listen and to engage more deeply. Real change happens when people understand, want, know, can, and keep doing something new. When that happens, change becomes culture. Which of these five steps have you overlooked most when trying to realize a change?

🗣️“You must be more assertive.” Last year, those five words burned into Amy’s memory. She’d walked out of her 2023 review at XYZ Global determined to “step up.” Speak more in meetings. Push harder on decisions. Stop softening her tone so she wouldn’t intimidate anyone. She did exactly that. Fast forward 12 months. Same conference room. Same 2 VPs across the table. 🔇“You’ve become too intense, need to work on softening your approach.” 😑 Amy stared at them, speechless. Wasn’t that what you asked for last year? Which version of me do you actually want? She thought about the past year: 🤔 The time she challenged a flawed budget forecast in front of the CFO, saving the company $3 million, but earning whispers that she was “abrasive.” 🤔 The time she stepped in to rescue a failing project, praised for her “grit” publicly, yet privately told she “dominated the room.” 🤔 The time she finally got invited to an executive offsite, only to overhear a VP say, “She’s great, but can be… a lot.” This is the tightrope trap senior women walk daily: • Be assertive, but not too assertive. • Be collaborative, but don’t fade into the background. • Be visible, but not “hungry.”    The same behavior praised in men (decisive, strong leader) gets women penalized as abrasive or too much. Until you set the narrative yourself, you’re trapped performing for a moving target. If you’re exhausted from balancing on a wire men don’t even see, here’s how to step off it and still rise. 1. Audit the pattern, not just the feedback • Track every piece of feedback, especially contradiction. Patterns reveal bias. If the goal keeps moving, it's not you! • Phrase to use in review: “Last year I was encouraged to increase my presence; this year I’m told to soften it. Can we clarify what success really looks like?”    2. Control the frame before the room does • Pre‑set the narrative in 1:1s and emails leading up to reviews. I.e., “This year I focused on driving results while bringing the team with me, you’ll see that reflected in project X and Y.” • This primes leadership to view your assertiveness as an intentional strategy, not a personality flaw.    3. Build echo chambers, not just results • Secure 2–3 allies who reinforce your strengths in rooms you’re not in. • Promotions happen in the absence, you need people echoing your narrative, not someone else’s. • Phrase to brief an ally: “If my leadership style comes up in review, can you speak to how I challenge decisions but still align the team?”    Women aren’t just asked to deliver results. They’re asked to perform, decode, and reframe, all while walking a wire men don’t even see. If you’re exhausted from balancing between “too soft” and “too aggressive,” stop walking the wire and start controlling the narrative. Join the waitlist of our next cohort of ⭐ From Hidden Talent to Visible Leaders ⭐ https://lnkd.in/gx7CpGGR 👊 Because leadership shouldn’t feel like an impossible balancing act.

I’ll be honest: I don’t know exactly what my job will look like in three years. If the pace of change feels uncertain to you, you aren’t alone. Whether you’re just starting out or you’re a veteran leader, we’re all navigating this shift together. While the future is unwritten, one thing is clear: I’m not sitting back to wait and see, and you shouldn’t either. To stay ahead in 2026, we must lean into one fundamental anchor: We don’t hire engineers to write code, we hire them to know what code to write. In a world where the "how" is increasingly automated, your value lies in your judgment and your curiosity. Here’s how to navigate this evolution: • Master the "Why": Don’t just execute a ticket; understand the business value. Why does this feature matter to our customers? When you understand the why, you become a strategic partner, not just a resource. • Invest in Human Skills: As technical execution gets faster, your ability to present an idea, influence a stakeholder, and lead a team becomes your greatest competitive advantage. Executive presence is now a core engineering skill. • Stay Radically Curious: Don’t wait for a training. Dive into new tools, break things, and lead the change. To know what to build, you have to stay grounded in the basics while being the first to embrace the new. We can no longer afford to passively react to change; we have to proactively embrace and drive it. Everyone has access to the same tools we do. Our edge comes from your context, your problem-solving, and your drive. The uncertainty isn't a signal to slow down. It’s a call to be bold, re-skill, and retool. Let’s stop second-guessing what the future looks like and start defining it together. #SoftwareEngineering #CareerGrowth

In the past few months, we've worked with partners who've run into the same challenge with AI adoption. They rolled out policies or guidelines without bringing people into the conversation first—no workshop, no consensus building, just documents that needed signatures or implementation. Unsurprisingly, the result was frustrated staff expected to enforce or follow rules they had no part in creating, and leaders facing resistance instead of adoption. Both AI policies and guidelines are critical for responsible AI adoption, but they have to be built intentionally, with stakeholders driving consensus, or they most likely won't work. After working with hundreds of districts, we've created the resource below. Here are the best practices we recommend. Policies are your compliance layer and are designed to protect your district. We suggest adaptations to existing: ✔️ Acceptable use policies ✔️ Data privacy/FERPA protections ✔️ Academic integrity standards ✔️ Cyberbullying policies (to add deepfakes) Guidelines are your change management layer. They are the "why" that brings people along. We recommend including the following in your AI guidelines: 💡 Vision for GenAI adoption across your district 💡 GenAI misuse/academic integrity response protocols 💡 GenAI chatbot and EdTech tool vetting processes 💡 Digital wellbeing, data privacy, and student safety practices 💡 Implementation tips and instructional supports 💡 AI Literacy training opportunities and expectations What matters most is that both policies and guidelines should be built with stakeholders, not handed down to them. They should evolve with feedback, evidence of impact, and technical advancements. In all of our guideline and policy development work, we always start with AI literacy. It's important to build foundational understanding across stakeholders so that when policies and guidelines are developed, people can contribute meaningfully to the process and understand the "why" behind what they're being asked to implement. Intentional stakeholder engagement isn't a nice-to-have. It's what we've seen drive adoption. #AIforEducation #GenAI #ChangeManagement #AI

Stealth layoffs aren't just another corporate trend. They're the new normal. The trend I have started to notice: → Workday: 1,750 cuts for AI push → Dell: 25,000 cuts over two years → Autodesk: 9% cut amid "sales changes" → HPE: 5% cuts through "expected attrition" → Meta: Fired top performers despite claims → Google: Switched to quiet monthly reductions Despite record profits, headcount growth across these companies remains stagnant or shrinking. Traditional mass layoffs are being replaced by a more calculated approach. The new playbook is nearly invisible: → Performance reviews target even top performers → Gradual reduction through attrition and hiring freezes → RTO mandates designed to drive voluntary departures → Restructuring justified as "investing in AI" (Workday) Multiple strategies now run in parallel: → Expanding "span of control" (more direct reports) → Increasing technical-to-non-technical staff ratios → Strategic office closures and "space consolidation" → Cuts spread across quarters, not single events The impact goes far beyond headcount. When organizations flatten, everything changes: → Same output is expected from fewer employees → Institutional memory erodes with each departure → Decision-making concentrates among fewer people → Career paths narrow as management layers disappear For employees, navigating this change requires strategy. Here's how to build resilience: → Upskill aggressively: Focus on high-growth areas → Build cross-functional visibility: Network widely → Understand the metrics: Know your company targets → Maintain financial readiness: Build emergency funds → Manage your mindset: Don't let fear drive decisions The goal isn't surviving the next cut. It's positioning yourself to thrive regardless of organizational shifts. What we're witnessing isn't another corporate cost-cutting strategy; it's the fundamental rewiring of the employer-employee relationship. Those who recognize this shift will not just survive; they'll define success on your own terms

In 2011, the Amazon Appstore failed on launch and Jeff Bezos was furious. It was my fault, and I handled one aspect of recovery so poorly that one of my engineers quit. I still regret it 14 years later. Please learn from my mistake. The main lesson is that when you are leading through a crisis, it can feel like it is all about you. It isn’t. It is about: 1) Solving the problem 2) Guiding your team through it The product issue was that there were some pretty simple bugs, and we solved those problem well enough that I was eventually promoted. Where I failed was in guiding my team through the crisis. My leadership miss was that I neglected to encourage and support the engineer who had written the bad code. He did a great job stepping up and supporting the effort to fix the problem, but shortly afterward, he resigned. During the crisis, I failed to make clear to him that we did not blame him for the launch failure despite the bugs. I imagine that left room for him to think we blamed him or that he didn’t belong. It is also possible that others did blame him directly and that I was too caught up in the crisis to realize it. Both instances were my responsibility as the leader of the team. His resignation taught me a valuable lesson about leading through a crisis: No matter how bad the situation is, your team must be your first priority. If you make them feel safe, they will move heaven and earth to fix the problem. If you don’t, they may still fix the problem, but the team itself will never be the same. As a leader, here is how you can give them what they need: 1) Take the blame and do not allow others to be blamed. In some bug cases after this we did not release the name of the engineer outside the team in order to protect them from judgment or blame. 2) Separate fixing the problem from figuring out why it happened. Once the problem is fixed, you can focus on root-causing. This lowers the risk of searching for answers getting confused with searching for someone to blame. 3) Realize that anyone involved in the problem already feels bad. High performers know when they have fallen short and let their team down. As a leader you have to show them the path to growth and success after the crisis. They do not need to be beaten up on- they have taken care of that themselves. 4) See crises and problems as growth opportunities, not personal flaws. Your team comes with you in a crisis whether you like it or not, so you might as well come out stronger on the other side. As a leader, the responsibility for a crisis is yours in two ways: The problem itself and the effect it has on the future of the team. Don’t get too caught up in the first to think about the second. Readers- Has your team survived a crisis? How did you handle it?

🔥🔥🔥HOT OFF THE PRESS: Excited to share our latest research on gas grid regulation in the context of Europe's net zero transitions! Our new paper, “Gas grid regulation in the context of net zero transitions: A review of seven European countries," published in Energy Research & Social Science explores the critical need for reforming gas infrastructure planning across Europe to meet climate targets. We analyzed case studies from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and the UK. The findings reveal a common challenge: existing regulatory frameworks are often misaligned with the urgent need to phase out fossil gas. However, countries like Denmark and the Netherlands are leading the way with proactive heat planning and clear decommissioning strategies. Key insights: - Current gas network development remains largely reactive, driven by distribution system operators (DSOs) rather than aligned with declining gas demand projections. - Without significant reforms, we risk stranded assets, rising consumer costs, and delayed decarbonization efforts. - Policymakers need to rethink consumer protection, especially for vulnerable groups who may bear disproportionate costs. Our recommendations include: - Establishing national fossil gas phase-out targets and granting energy regulators a net-zero mandate. - Aligning gas infrastructure planning with heat planning to avoid inefficient investments. - Shortening depreciation periods to mitigate stranded asset risks and ensuring fair cost distribution. - Incorporating comprehensive decommissioning frameworks that protect both the environment and consumers. This research aims to guide regulators and policymakers in managing the transition away from fossil gas more effectively, fairly, and sustainably. Read the full paper here: https://lnkd.in/ezEM--Nb We would love to hear your thoughts on these findings. How do you see the future of gas infrastructure shaping up in your region?

The "Order Taker" Trap: Why modern L&D is much more than "just a training request." In the beginning, many think L&D is simple: A manager asks for a course, you build the course, and everyone is "trained." Confidence is high because you are checking boxes and delivering content. Then you start looking at the data… You realize: -Consumption does not equal Competence. -Content is everywhere; Context is what’s missing. -A 60-minute module won’t fix a broken culture. This is the L&D Maturity Curve in action: ✔ Level 1: The Order Taker (Focus on "The Course") ✔ Level 2: The Content Curator (Focus on "The Access") ✔ Level 3: The Performance Consultant (Focus on "The Outcome") The real growth happens when you stop asking "What do they need to learn?" And start asking "What do they need to DO differently?" If you work in: 👉 Organisational Development 👉 Talent Management 👉 People Ops 👉 Corporate Learning 👉 Performance Coaching You have likely felt that "Valley of Despair" when a training program didn’t move the needle. But that’s exactly where the shift to Strategic L&D begins. The more we move away from "slides" and toward "solutions," the more impact we have on the bottom line. #LearningAndDevelopment #StrategicLND #HumanResources #CorporateLearning #FutureOfWork #PerformanceConsulting