A human-centered approach to change management
There are some change management models out there. Kotter’s 8-step Change Model, Lewin’s Change Management Model, Bidges’ Transition Model. McKinsey’s 7-S Framework, ADKAR. They are all very rational, top-down, linear and project an aura of control. They are basically all models that operate within the Scientific Management way of seeing the world. Years ago, I wrote an essay on how applying the skills of design could help change management. At the time I was working on a change program at the company I was working at. If I look back now, some things changed but not enough to get to our north star. More recently I have been part of another re-organization where I got to apply some of those same ideas (and a couple more I picked up along the way) and now the change was successful. What was different this time and what was my approach to change management this time around?
The light and the dark side of change
I think the main difference between the first change program I was part of and the second has to do with the light and dark side of change. I wrote about the light and dark side of leading teams in my critique on the Pyramid of Lencioni. In that essay I argued that leadership is a combination of light and bright things like trust, engagement, and ownership and dark things like authority and compliance.
What I think went wrong in the first change was that it was all light side, it was completely voluntary. We did get to a shared vision, we co-created things that needed to change, we visualized it. But we relied solely on the will of people to change. There was no pressure. As it turns out, most people don’t want to change just for a north star. Change means loss, uncertainty, learning new things, stepping out of your comfort zone. To only counter-balance that with a vision of the future was not enough. The north star didn’t provide enough sense of urgency. Things were going okay-ish, so why change? Maybe the world around us is changing, maybe there are untapped opportunities, but if things are fine right now, why change?
The second change was different because there was a clear break with the past. Things were going okay-ish, there were some issues that couldn’t be resolved, people were used to it and it wasn’t dramatic enough to motivate radical change. The situation could have stayed the same and people would think it was fine. But it wasn’t fine and something needed to change to create a breakthrough.
So a decisive call was made. The board decided on a major change in the department and team setup. This created genuine urgency — a crisis moment that signaled “the old way is over.” Someone had a vision and the authority to implement it. That was not easy. The decision was met with resistance. People were angry, confused, scared. But it was bold and clear and strong.
This might sound harsh, but my conclusion is that some form of urgency or disruption is needed to really create change. This doesn’t mean authoritarian control — quite the opposite, as you’ll see. But it does mean creating a clear break from the past, whether that comes from external market forces, leadership decisions, or genuine crisis. Most people need that push to leave their comfort zone. So they can get to the other side and benefit from new opportunities, growth, and better performance.
Disruption first, then change management
I used to think change management was about leading people gently toward a new vision. And yes, there are exceptional leaders who can create such compelling visions that people willingly embrace difficult change — think of transformational social movements. But even those movements involved external pressures, crises, and forces that made the status quo untenable.
What I’ve learned is that change often needs disruption first — something that creates genuine urgency and signals a clear break from the past. But that’s just the beginning. The disruption gets people unstuck. What happens next is what determines success or failure.
This is where most traditional change management models fail. They assume that once the change is announced and the plan is communicated, it’s just a matter of moving people through rational stages of adoption. But that’s not how humans work. After the disruption comes the real work: the human work of grief, meaning-making, co-creation, and relationship building.
So here’s my reframe: Change management doesn’t start with the announcement of change. It starts after the disruption, when people are dealing with the reality of what’s been lost and what needs to be built.
The 4 elements of my change management model
After the bold decision was made to reorganize our teams, I knew the traditional playbook wouldn’t work. PowerPoint decks explaining the new org chart, FAQ documents, town halls with Q&A — these weren’t going to cut it. People needed something different. Here’s what we did, and why it worked.
1. Emotion: hold space for loss
The first priority after the change was announced was to create space for the loss people were experiencing. Not in a token “we know this is hard” slide, but real, extended space.
In our first team meeting after the announcement, I didn’t jump to “here’s the exciting future.” I said: “This sucks. Some of you are losing teammates you’ve worked with for years. Some of you are uncertain about your role. Some of you are angry about how this was decided. Let’s talk about that.”
We spent a full session just acknowledging what we were losing. People talked about colleagues who were moving to other teams, about ways of working that felt safe and familiar, about uncertainty and fear. One person said, “I feel like I’m being asked to grieve the loss of my team while also being excited about a new one, and I can’t do both at once.” That was exactly right.
I used the metaphor of the chrysalis stage — that liminal space where the caterpillar has dissolved but the butterfly hasn’t formed yet. “We’re in the goo right now,” I told them. “And that’s okay. We need to be in the goo for a while.”
This wasn’t a one-time thing. For months, I kept checking in: “How are you feeling about the change?” “What are you still grieving?” “What feels uncertain?” Some people needed weeks to process, others months. You can’t rush grief.
Why this mattered: People can’t engage with the future until they’ve processed the past. Trying to skip the grief stage just drives it underground, where it becomes passive resistance or disengagement.
2. Co-creation: shared vision
The reorganization came with a strategic direction from leadership. But a vision from above doesn’t automatically become shared. People need to own it, and that works best when they can put something of themselves into it.
Here’s what I did: I took the high-level strategic vision and said to the team, “This is the direction. Now let’s figure out together what this means for us, for our team, for how we work.”
We ran workshops where people broke into small groups to answer questions like:
- What does this vision look like in practice for our team?
- What unique value can we bring to this new setup?
- What opportunities does this create that we didn’t have before?
- What do we need to learn or change to succeed?
One team member said in a workshop: “I didn’t choose this change, but I can choose how we respond to it.” That became our rallying cry.
We created our team’s version of the vision together — not contradicting the strategic direction, but interpreting it, making it concrete, making it ours. People started saying “our vision” instead of “the leadership’s vision.”
Why this mattered: You can’t force people to care about a vision they had no hand in shaping. But you can give them space to make it their own. The strategic direction created the boundaries; the co-creation gave people agency within those boundaries.
3. Meaning: storytelling
We are all on a journey together, and every journey has a story. Stories are what bring people together and motivate them. As Yuval Noah Harari told us in Sapiens, shared stories are what made humans the dominant species on earth. Countries are stories, money is a story, what success looks like is a story.
I became intentional about telling and retelling the story of our change. Not in a corporate communication way, but in a human way.
The story had a structure:
- The past: “We had a good team, we did solid work, we had routines that worked”
- The crisis: “But the world around us was changing, and we were hitting limits we couldn’t break through with our old setup”
- The disruption: “So a bold decision was made to reorganize”
- The journey: “We’re in the messy middle now, figuring out how to work together in new ways”
- The emerging future: “And here’s what we’re starting to see is possible…”
I told this story in different ways in different contexts. In one-on-ones, I’d connect someone’s specific challenge back to the larger narrative. In team meetings, I’d share examples of small wins that showed the vision coming to life. When someone did something that embodied our new way of working, I’d call it out: “This is exactly what we’re building toward.”
One powerful moment was when a team member who had been very resistant to the change shared a story in a team meeting about how a new cross-functional collaboration had unlocked something that wouldn’t have been possible in the old structure. I didn’t prompt this — they just told the story. And it was more powerful than anything I could have said because it was real, it was theirs, and it showed the vision becoming concrete.
The story evolved as we went. Early on, it was mostly about what we were leaving behind and where we were heading. Later, it became about the obstacles we were overcoming together. Now, months in, it’s about the new possibilities we’re discovering. We were coloring in the North Star together.
Why this mattered: Abstract visions don’t stick. Stories do. And repeating the story in different forms, in different contexts, with evolving details as new things emerged — this is what helped people make meaning of the chaos.
4. Relationships: team building
When teams change, the social fabric tears. People who worked together for years are separated. New people are thrown together who don’t know each other’s work styles, communication preferences, or expertise. The informal networks of trust and collaboration that make work actually happen — these are disrupted.
You can’t just assume new teams will gel on their own. You have to intentionally rebuild the relationships.
Here’s what we did:
- Structured getting-to-know-you time: Not icebreakers, but real conversations about how people work, what they value, what they need from teammates
- Working sessions with reflection: We didn’t just work together, we also talked about how we were working together
- Social time: Lunches, drinks, team activities outside of work
- Rituals: We created new team rituals that were ours — a weekly check-in format, a way of celebrating wins, inside jokes that emerged and we leaned into.
After a few months, someone said to me: “I was so sad about losing my old team. But I actually really like this team now.” That’s when I knew the relationships were forming.
Why this mattered: Work is social. We need to trust the people we work with, understand them, have shared experiences with them. You can’t legislate this, but you can create the conditions for it to happen.
Four elements, one human truth
These are my four elements of a human-centered approach to change management: emotions, co-creation, meaning, and relationships.
This is what makes us human. This is what we need in any situation, and maybe a change is what makes this clearer. We need space for our emotions, we need to create things together with other people, we need meaning to motivate us, and we need bonds with others. Holding space, creativity, storytelling, and bonding.
The traditional change management models miss this. They treat people as rational actors who just need information and direction. But we’re not rational actors. We’re emotional, social creatures who need time to grieve, agency to create, stories to make meaning, and relationships to thrive.
Sustaining the Change
One more thing the models get wrong: they assume change has an end point. You implement the change, people adopt it, you “refreeze” in the new state. Done.
But that’s not how it works. Change doesn’t end, it evolves. Nine months after our reorganization, we’re still learning, still adjusting, still discovering new ways to work together.
What’s kept the change alive:
- Continuing the storytelling: I still tell the story of our journey, but now it includes all the challenges we’ve overcome and victories we’ve had
- Celebrating evidence of the new way: When someone does something that shows the change is real and working, I call it out
- Creating space for ongoing adjustment: “How’s this working? What do we need to change?” This signals that we’re not locked into a rigid new structure
- Reinforcing the relationships: Team building isn’t a one-time thing, it’s ongoing
The change feels successful now not because we executed a perfect plan, but because the team has ownership of it. They’ve made it theirs. They see the opportunities. They’re not just complying with a new org chart — they’re actively building something new together.
What This Means for You
If you’re leading a change, here’s my advice based on my experiences so far:
Don’t pretend you can change people gently if the situation requires urgency. Create the disruption that makes the old way untenable. But recognize that’s just the starting point.
After the disruption, shift into human-centered mode. Hold space for grief. Create opportunities for co-creation. Tell and retell the story. Build relationships intentionally.
Don’t treat change management as a project with an end date. It’s an ongoing process of meaning-making, adjustment, and relationship building.
Trust people to handle the truth. You don’t need to spin the change as all positive. People can handle loss and opportunity at the same time. In fact, they need to.
The scientific management approach to change management assumes you can control and plan change like you’re engineering a machine. But organizations aren’t machines. They’re ecosystems of humans. And humans need emotion, meaning, agency, and connection.
Give them that, and change has a chance of actually working.
