Best Practices for Employee Involvement in Change

Change doesn’t fail because people resist it. It fails because people feel left out of it. If employees feel like change is happening to them—instead of with them—You will get compliance at best. But if they feel like they’re part of something bigger? That’s when commitment begins. Engagement isn’t about cheerleading from the top. It’s about designing a process where people feel informed, involved, and empowered. Here are 7 ways to build real engagement during transformation: 🔹 1. Involve, Don’t Just Inform → People support what they help build. Invite them early into conversations. 🔹 2. Link Change to Personal Meaning → If it doesn't connect to their purpose, it won't stick. 🔹 3. Create Local Ownership → Make change visible at the team level—not just in strategy decks. 🔹 4. Recognize Early Adopters → Highlight those who lead by example to inspire the rest. 🔹 5. Share the Journey Publicly → Updates = traction. Visibility = trust. 🔹 6. Ask, Don’t Assume → Feedback isn’t a one-time event—it’s your fuel for course correction. 🔹 7. Provide Resources to Succeed → A new mindset needs the support of new tools and capabilities. Engagement is not an initiative. It’s a leadership discipline. And in every successful transformation, it’s the difference between quiet quitting and full commitment. If your team is navigating change and you need help building alignment, ownership, and follow-through… 📩 DM me “TRANSFORM” to explore how I support organizations as a fractional transformation executive—turning strategy into shared momentum.

Most Enablement efforts fail. It’s usually because people focus on the wrong parts. Figuring out the problem isn’t that hard.  Figuring out how to fix it isn’t that hard.  Getting people to change what they do every day is really, really hard. Let’s say you’re trying to get 30 reps to change how they do discovery, or qualify, or whatever.  That’s like getting 30 people to quit smoking all at the same time. Even if they want to do it, it’s hard to make it work.  Why?  People revert back to their ingrained behavior.  It’s been good enough so far.  It’s what got them to where they are now.  Every part of your body and mind is wired to preserve homeostasis.  Establishing a new pattern of behavior requires the application of intention and effort over and over again, until the new pattern becomes the default. If you want your Enablement efforts to succeed, you can’t just design and launch a new approach.  Your efforts will be wasted unless you do the following: 1) Be inclusive when diagnosing the problem:  If you go look at the data, figure everything out, and tell everyone, no one will be on board.  They haven’t been through the diagnostic process themselves.  You have to bring them along with you.  They have to come to the conclusions themselves. 2) Be inclusive when designing a solution:  Similar to above.  If you come up with the solution and tell everyone to do it, there will be immediate resistance. Even if you’ve already figured everything out, you need to create a cross-functional team to help design the solution. 3) GET MANAGER BUY-IN!!!! - If the managers aren’t committed to the change, it will fail.  Literally, the whole things lives or dies with the managers. 4) Overcommunicate:  Your change needs to be everywhere.  The bigger the change, the more everyone needs to hear about it.  Multiple avenues of communication, for longer than you think you probably need to. 5) Create avenues for accountability and reinforcement:  You and the rest of leadership should be committed to reinforcing the change for at least a month, possibly a quarter.  It’s tempting to move onto something else, but if you don’t consistently reinforce the new behavior, you’ve wasted everyone’s time.

Too many organizations treat transformation as something to be done to their people. Rather than something their people are part of. This subtle difference matters a lot. In my experience, the most powerful shift comes when people start feeling like they belong to the change. How do you get there? → Clearly communicate the why behind every shift. People need purpose, not just direction. → Give teams a genuine voice. Let them shape the path, not just follow it. → Build ownership at every level. Empower leaders and frontline teams alike to champion and steer the change. When change is co-created, people become ambassadors, not obstacles. They feel seen. Heard. Included. That’s how you turn a top-down mandate into a shared movement.