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Managing Change at Work: The Brutal Truth No One Wants to Hear
Change initiatives fail 73% of the time. Not because people are stubborn. Not because the strategy was wrong. But because leaders treat change like a software update instead of the messy, emotional rollercoaster it actually is.
I've been implementing organisational change for seventeen years across Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane, and I'm bloody tired of watching executives throw money at consultants who promise painless transformations. There's no such thing.
Here's what I wish someone had told me when I was a bright-eyed change manager in 2007: most people don't resist change—they resist being changed. Big difference.
The Real Problem with Change Management
Every second business consultant will tell you that communication is key. Send more emails. Hold town halls. Create fancy infographics. Bollocks.
The problem isn't information deficit. It's trust deficit.
When Qantas announced their restructure in 2020, they didn't fail because staff didn't understand the business case. They failed because employees had watched years of broken promises. People don't trust what you say when they've seen what you've done.
I learned this the hard way during a merger project in Perth. Spent three months crafting the perfect communication strategy. Glossy presentations. Q&A sessions. The works.
Failed spectacularly.
Why Most Change Training Misses the Mark
The corporate training industry loves to sell you emotional intelligence for managers as if EQ is some magical cure-all. And yes, emotional intelligence matters enormously when you're navigating workplace transformation.
But here's the uncomfortable truth: most managers would rather have a root canal than acknowledge their own role in change resistance.
I remember working with a mining company outside Adelaide where the General Manager kept insisting his team "just needed to get on board" with the new safety protocols. Mate, your team has watched you ignore safety concerns for six months. They're not resisting change—they're protecting themselves from your inconsistency.
Change isn't a project with a start and end date. It's an ongoing conversation about what matters and why.
The Three Types of Change Resistance (And How to Actually Handle Them)
The Logical Resisters: These people have genuine concerns about implementation. They're not being difficult—they're being thorough. Listen to them. They'll save you from expensive mistakes.
The Emotional Resisters: They're grieving what they're losing. Acknowledge it. Don't try to logic your way through someone's feelings about losing their corner office or their favourite coffee machine.
The Political Resisters: They're protecting their territory. This requires managing difficult conversations with surgical precision. Half the time, they have valid concerns about resource allocation or decision-making processes.
What Actually Works in Change Management
Forget the change curve models. Here's what I've seen work in real organisations with real people:
Start with the why, but make it personal. Not the corporate why—the individual why. How does this change make Sarah's job easier? How does it help Marcus get home to his kids on time?
Give people choices within constraints. You might not be able to change the what or the when, but you can often influence the how.
Celebrate small wins obsessively. I'm talking about acknowledging when someone tries the new system and doesn't complain. When a team hits their first milestone. When someone asks a good question instead of staying silent.
Most importantly, admit when you don't know something. The fastest way to lose credibility during change is to pretend you have all the answers.
The Networking Effect Nobody Talks About
Change spreads through informal networks, not org charts. The person who really influences opinion might be Janet from accounts receivable, not the department head.
I learned this working with a logistics company in Brisbane. We kept focusing our change efforts on the supervisors and wondering why nothing was sticking. Turns out, there was a forklift operator named Dave who'd been there for twenty-two years. When Dave was on board, his whole crew followed. When he had doubts, productivity dropped.
Find your Daves. They're worth more than any change management framework.
The Technology Trap
Every business thinks their change challenge is unique. "We're implementing a new CRM system" or "We're moving to hybrid work" or "We're restructuring our sales team."
Newsflash: it's all the same change.
You're asking people to do things differently. Whether it's clicking new buttons or reporting to new people or working from their kitchen table—the psychological process is identical.
Stop obsessing over the technical details and start paying attention to the human details.
What I Got Wrong for Years
For the first decade of my career, I thought resistance was the enemy. I developed increasingly sophisticated strategies to overcome objections and neutralise opposition.
Complete waste of time.
Resistance isn't the opposite of change—it's part of it. When someone pushes back, they're engaging with your proposal. They care enough to fight. The people you really need to worry about are the ones who smile, nod, and do absolutely nothing different.
Some of the best implementations I've been part of started with heated arguments in meeting rooms. Conflict means people are invested in the outcome.
The Brisbane Lesson
The most successful change project I ever led was for a professional services firm in Brisbane. The managing partner wanted to implement activity-based working—no more assigned desks, everyone hot-desking based on their daily tasks.
The staff hated the idea.
Instead of steamrolling ahead with implementation, we spent two months testing the concept with volunteers. We learned that people weren't actually opposed to flexible workspaces—they were terrified of losing their personal items and important documents.
Simple solution: secure storage lockers and a clear clean-desk policy.
What could have been a disaster became their most popular initiative. Because we listened to the resistance instead of fighting it.
The Real Measure of Change Success
Forget your KPIs for a moment. Here's how you know if your change initiative is actually working:
People stop asking when things will go back to normal. They start suggesting improvements to the new way of working. They begin training new staff in the updated processes without being asked.
Change is successful when it becomes invisible—when the new way of doing things just becomes "the way we do things."
Where Most Leaders Go Wrong
They confuse activity with progress.
Sending emails about change isn't managing change. Running workshops about change isn't implementing change. Creating change committees isn't driving change.
Change happens in the quiet moments between meetings when someone chooses to try the new approach instead of reverting to the old one.
It happens when a team leader backs up the new process even when it's inconvenient. When someone suggests a better way to implement the initiative instead of complaining about it.
These moments can't be mandated or managed—only encouraged and supported.
The Australian Context
Australian workplaces have a particular relationship with authority that affects how change unfolds. We're generally willing to give new ideas a fair go, but we're also quick to call bullshit when something doesn't make sense.
This is actually an advantage if you know how to work with it. Aussie workers will tell you exactly what's wrong with your change plan—if you create the right environment for honest feedback.
The trick is distinguishing between legitimate concerns and simple whinging. One deserves serious consideration. The other needs a firm redirect.
Looking Forward
The businesses that thrive in the next decade won't be the ones that avoid change—they'll be the ones that get good at it. That means building change capability into your culture, not treating it as an occasional disruption.
Start viewing change resistance as market research. Your people are telling you something important about implementation challenges, resource constraints, or competing priorities.
Listen harder than you talk. Move slower than you want to. Celebrate smaller wins than you think matter.
And remember: change isn't something you do to people. It's something you do with them.
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