I Don’t Want to Change You
a love letter and a card deck
My darling Employee,
I don’t want to change you. I want to understand you. I think you’re smart and motivated, and you want us to succeed. So, I want to know what’s really bothering you. And then sweep those barriers away. So we can change together — because we want to, because we believe the future is more beautiful together.
Respect and empathy always,
The Big Initiative
I believe the fastest, most effective path to change starts with empathy. I created the Barriers to Change cards because my company at the time, XPLANE, was constantly receiving calls from clients claiming to have a clarity problem. “If only our people understood the new strategy, we’d surely succeed!” I often had a hunch that the client was actually struggling with one of many other possible reasons (besides lack of clarity) why people don’t change. So we made a deck of cards to identify those reasons — 36 of them.
Here’s how to play:
- Get together employees who will be affected by a change
2. Ask them to divide the cards, quote side up, into two stacks — quotes that ring true for them, and quotes that don’t apply to them.
3. Have them set the “false” stack aside and focus on the “true” stack. Ask them to pick the 5 cards that represent their biggest barriers to the change.
4. Now flip the 5 cards over. These are the biggest barriers — and they might not be what you anticipated!
Look at the color of the card — do several cards have the same color? This means you can focus on one category (problem alignment, solution alignment, interpersonal, the unknown, engagement, execution). All different colors? Now you have several leverage points for lowering barriers to change.
This exercise is one way to show your employees you love and respect them. It not only makes your efforts more focused and effective, but it sends the message, “I don’t want to change you — I want to understand you and build the future together.”
