Winning Your Game of Change Project Whack-a-Mole.

The rate of digital transformation is driving demand for change management to unprecedented levels. You probably have a robust internal change management function to handle your organization’s IT initiatives.

The good news is that leaders know that these initiatives won’t succeed without change management. The bad news is that you might now have a capacity problem.

You could try to cover multiple projects with one change lead. Or you could focus your leads on the highest-priority projects and hope the other projects stay afloat. Until they don’t. And then you must move the change lead back to save the endangered project. Now you’re playing a game of whack-a-mole.

How do you evolve your model to meet current and future demand for change management?

Use a flexible service model for change support.

Not all change initiatives are created equal. They vary in scale, complexity, and impact. The change management expertise built into each team also varies. You can right-size your support of your organization’s projects with a flexible service model.

We like to think of change service levels in three main buckets:

1. Full Service – This option is the white glove option, where you dedicate a full-time team to one change effort. It’s what you want for complex, large-scale digital transformation initiatives. Here, you have someone who wakes up every day to plan and execute change strategies to prepare impacted stakeholders for a specific change.
2. Coaching Support – This level is appropriate when the project team has some change management expertise. You can provide the team with best practices, targeted advice, and insights, as needed. In this case, establish standing meetings with your key initiative team so you stay current with the project, and provide insight when the team doesn’t know what they don’t know.
3. Self-Service – At this level, you provide standard tools and templates to the initiative team, and they apply them as they see fit. This works best for smaller initiatives and/or initiatives with significant built-in change management experience.

A flexible change support service model acknowledges the change capabilities a team already has and the complexity and volume of change projects. You will probably need a combination of the three service levels to cover all your organization’s initiatives. Using this a framework will help you organize your resourcing plans.

Consider a partnership.

Depending on your needs, it’s worthwhile to consider a partnership to support change work. For example, a Managed Service Agreement with a partner can give you robust change planning and resourcing across multiple workstreams simultaneously, while providing coordination and consistency. And a partner can flex to provide the right service level for each project.

A good partner will invest in learning your processes, methodologies and practices — and apply standard change tools and templates — saving time and money. Your project teams benefit from consistent experiences, long-term relationships with deeply skilled change resources, and a fast path to value for their investment.

More attention on change is a good thing, but how you use that focus determines your outcomes.

Download a handy guide to your service model options, here.

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Improve engagement, adoption, and performance through stories.

“This new system is going to eliminate our jobs.” “This system will increase my workload.” “I don’t need to use this system – I have everything I need in Excel.”

Sound familiar? These are the messages your people tell themselves about your project. They sabotage your implementation. It’s time to change the narrative.

What Stories Do for Your Initiative

Create the right mindset.

We naturally tell ourselves stories to make something new seem familiar. What’s familiar can be either good or bad – we’re subconsciously looking for context to interpret the experience.

For years, the members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences chose their Oscar nominees by paper, submitting ballots that had to be manually counted. But in 2012, they decided to introduce a new system for electronic voting. When the team asked members what people were saying about the new system, they learned that people were comparing it to the movie “Recount” – a story about the 2000 US presidential election, and controversy over voting machines.

That story was familiar, but not helpful. The team needed Academy members to have the right mindset. So, the team began telling members stories about the evolution of film — moving from silent movies to talkies to digital – like the movie Avatar. This familiar story reframed the change as something good, exciting, and inevitable.

If our goal is adoption of a new system, we need to create an openness to what’s happening next by capturing imagination, taking users on a journey, and cultivating a positive emotional response.

Promote organizational culture and values.

Your initiative is happening in the context of your company’s culture. Telling a story that aligns with that culture reduces resistance and further strengthens what’s best about your company.

For example, when Kindercare introduced a new service system for child check-in and payment, they could have told stories about employees being efficient and operationally excellent. They didn’t. They instead told stories about employees being able to care and connect – which synced with their values and culture — and how this new system would make care and connection possible.

Boost engagement and motivation.

Great stories answer the question, “Why should I care?” Stories make technical content more compelling.

When Netflix moved to the cloud, they shared stories about common issues with their current infrastructure, like outages during peak viewing times, and the need to scale during new season releases. They used relatable metaphors, like “packing for a move” or “expanding a living space” to introduce technical IT concepts.

By framing information within a story, we illustrate how new systems or processes impact the real-life work of employees, making the content more relatable and interesting.

Help employees remember what they learned.

The human brain is naturally wired to remember stories better than abstract concepts or isolated facts. This is because the brain’s visual and sensory processing areas – which we use when we’re listening to stories — developed long before the parts that handle language and symbolic thinking.

Our brains use two systems, verbal and non-verbal (visual), to process information. When we hear or read a story, we engage both systems. That’s because stories often create mental images. Lists, acronyms, or data, tend to activate only the verbal system. Engaging both systems makes recall much easier.

One study showed that people are up to 22 times more likely to remember information when it is embedded in a narrative rather than in a list of facts.

This means that employees who learn about new systems through stories are more likely to retain and use the information effectively.

Why Stories Work

Brain Evolution

We evolved a brain with three parts: the reptilian survival brain, the limbic emotional brain, and the neocortex thinking brain. Information flows from the inside out – from survival, to emotional, to thinking. Emotions come before thoughts. We make decisions based on emotion and come up with reasons afterward. So, stories, which stimulate emotions, are great for persuading people to make a decision or take an action.

Mirroring

Research using fMRI demonstrates that listeners’ brains sync with the storyteller’s brain; areas of the storyteller’s brain that are active while telling the story become active in the listeners’ brains after a short delay.

Dopamine

Stories are great combining emotion with information. They trigger the brain’s reward system, which releases dopamine and makes us feel good. Dopamine is linked to memory, so it helps us remember the information in the story.

Cortex Activity

Stories activate multiple areas of the brain, emotion centers, motor cortexes, and visual processing centers. To some extent, when we hear a story, we live it. Our brains simulate the events and actions in the story, including the sensations and feelings that go with it. A story we hear becomes our own experience, and that rich experience sticks with us.

How Should You Begin?

1. Ask yourself, what stories are already out there? Better yet, ask people around you. People are telling stories about what happened before, what is going on now, and what they expect in the future. You need to know what’s out there to either use it or address it.
2. Determine what familiar things you can hook into. What do your users have in common? What are their shared experiences? Start there – your stories will gain momentum more quickly.
3. Don’t be afraid of negative stories. They capture attention because of our innate fear of risk. Can you tell a story about the consequences of failure? For example, if your users all experienced the same failed cutover you can, and must, explain how this time it’s different.
4. Grab their attention. Include detail, names, and real-life struggles! The more specific it is, the more memorable it will be.

Stories just work. They are fundamental to how we operate as humans. If we tap into the stories our users are telling themselves, and guide them to the right stories, we can shape the narrative and make IT implementations easier and more successful.

Click here to download our quick reference tool to help you build your own stories.

Want to explore this topic in more detail or learn more about Emerson? Hop on his calendar: Book a meeting with Rich

How Public Sector Leaders Can Sustain Momentum Through Complexity.

Public sector leaders aren’t imagining it: the pace of change has accelerated. And the stacking of change is what’s wearing people down.

A new policy direction arrives before the last one is fully implemented. A process redesign collides with an audit cycle. A technology rollout launches while teams are still learning the previous system. In government, change rarely comes one initiative at a time. It comes in layers — policy, process, technology, funding, stakeholder expectations – and often your staff has limited capacity to absorb the cumulative impact.

That cumulative impact has a name: change fatigue. And if directors don’t address it directly, it quietly turns into resistance, disengagement, delays, and attrition — exactly when the mission can least afford it.

What Change Fatigue Looks Like in Government Teams

Change fatigue isn’t simply “people don’t like change.” It’s a capacity issue. Even highly committed public servants can hit a saturation point when they’re navigating constant shifts without time to stabilize.

You’ll see it as:

• Passive resistance which sounds like “We’ll wait this out”
• Workarounds and shadow processes because the new way doesn’t feel safe or clear yet
• Decision paralysis due to too many moving parts and unclear priorities
• Emotional flattening which shows up as less initiative, creativity, and discretionary effort
• Increased friction between teams, especially when changes cut across departments

In many government environments, fatigue is intensified by two realities leaders can’t ignore:

The work is mission-critical and public-facing. Mistakes can have real consequences for communities.

Teams often operate under constraints. Limited staffing, fixed timelines, compliance requirements, and competing mandates leave little slack for learning and adaptation.

Why Continuous Change Drains Capacity

Even if the public sector change is a good one, there are three common drivers of fatigue:

• Too many priorities; not enough focus. When everything is urgent, people stop believing any of it is important.
• Insufficient “meaning-making.” If leaders communicate the what without the why and why now, teams fill in the gaps, often with worst-case assumptions. By the way, negativity bias is real; during uncertainty, people default to threat-focused interpretations.
• Lack of stabilization time. Change requires learning. Learning requires psychological safety and time. When teams aren’t given time to become competent, the new way becomes associated with anxiety and failure.

The Director’s Job

At Emerson, we often adopt the mindset of an air traffic controller, where we help our prime teaming partner see the “flight map” of the organization. We identify the concurrent initiatives impacting the same stakeholders so we can anticipate conflicts, clarify messaging, and ensure smooth implementation of activities. This is particularly valuable in large-scale government projects with multiple stakeholders and initiatives.

The idea is to keep a structured but nimble approach, helping our partners meet project milestones, manage risks effectively, and deliver successful outcomes.

Sustaining momentum through complexity is less about “motivating harder” and more about leading with precision: designing the environment so people can execute without burning out.

Here are practical steps that work especially well for public sector teams navigating policy, process, and technology change.

Name the fatigue without blaming the team.

People often hesitate to say they’re overwhelmed in government settings because they think it sounds unprofessional. But, when leaders name change fatigue directly, it legitimizes their experience and opens the door to problem-solving.

Try language like:

• “We’ve had layered change for months. Fatigue is a normal response to sustained complexity.”
• “Our goal is not to push harder — it’s to work smarter and protect capacity while we deliver.”

This reduces stigma and creates shared reality: two ingredients that increase trust during uncertainty.

Create a “change portfolio,” not a change pile.

Most teams don’t struggle with change; they struggle with competing change. Directors can help by managing initiatives like a portfolio.

Here’s a simple approach:

1. List all active changes (policy updates, process changes, tech rollouts, reporting changes).
2. For each change project, clarify the impact level, required behavior shifts, who is affected, and
3. Then make explicit decisions:
   • The scope of change projects you’ll tackle: what to start, stop, or pause
   • The sequence of change projects: what to do first, second, and third

What matters here is not the perfect plan. What matters is the signal to your organization that leadership is actively helping to manage the changes, not just accepting them and insisting on more work.

Translate “change” into clear expectations.

Government teams often get change communications that are heavy on policy language and light on practical guidance. That’s where fatigue turns into confusion.

For each change project, directors can reduce cognitive load by answering three questions repeatedly:

1. What’s staying the same?
2. What’s changing?
3. What does “good” behavior and performance look like in daily work?

If you can’t describe the change in observable behaviors, your team can’t reliably deliver it.

Build micro-recovery into the system.

Fatigue isn’t only emotional — it’s operational. The antidote is not a poster about resilience. It’s recovery time built into the workflow.

Here are some options that work in public sector environments:

• No-meeting blocks during rollout weeks
• Office hours for tech/process Q&A instead of ad hoc interruptions
• Temporary service-level adjustments during go-live periods (even small ones)
• Rotating “change champions” so the same people aren’t always carrying the load

The goal is to treat capacity like a real resource.

Make progress visible and celebrate competence.

When you have change fatigue, teams lose a sense of forward movement. Leaders can restore momentum by highlighting:

• What is now working that wasn’t working before
• The skills we’ve gained (especially with new technology or processes)
• New outcomes, like reduced risk, improved cycle time, or improved service outcomes

This counters recency bias (the tendency to focus on the latest problem) and helps people see a trajectory, not just turbulence.

A practical tactic: a short monthly “Change Wins + What’s Next” update – make it one page, plain language, and no fluff.

Strengthen middle managers: the real change multipliers.

Directors can’t carry every message or coach every team. In government, supervisors and managers translate strategy into daily execution. If they’re unclear or unsupported, fatigue spreads fast.

Support them with:

• A weekly talking points brief: what to say, what to listen for
• Quick escalation paths, so issues don’t linger
• Training on coaching conversations during uncertainty
• Permission to adapt implementation details locally while holding the standard

When managers feel equipped, teams feel safer.

Listen for “hidden resistance” and treat it as data.

Resistance is often framed as a problem. In reality, it’s feedback — sometimes about workload, sometimes about design, and sometimes about trust.

Instead of asking, “Why won’t they adopt this?” try:

• “What’s making this hard in day-to-day work life?”
• “Where does the new process break down?”
• “What risks are people trying to avoid?”

This shifts the conversation from compliance to improvement, which is crucial in complex public sector systems.

How Public Sector Teams Thrive Through Change

Sustaining momentum through complexity isn’t about having unlimited energy. It’s about creating the conditions where your team’s energy is used wisely.

Change fatigue is real, but it’s not inevitable. When directors manage priorities, reduce ambiguity, protect capacity, and make progress visible, they don’t just get through change. They build a culture that can hold steady while the environment keeps moving.

And in government, that’s how missions survive — and communities benefit — through the next wave of policy, process, and technology change.

Want to explore the topic in more detail with John? Hop on his calendar: Book a meeting with John

What I Know Now That I Didn’t Know Then.

A follow-up to “What Project Management Taught Me About Change”

A year ago, I wrote about earning my PMP and what that process revealed about my work in change management.

I wrote about seeing the connections: how a Work Breakdown Structure could help identify resistance points, and how stakeholder registers mapped beautifully onto influence and engagement planning. I wrote about the potential of bridging those two worlds.

What I didn’t know yet was how that bridge would actually get tested. This past September, I got my answer.

I had one portal, two hats.

Our team supported the rollout of an enterprise employee portal, a large-scale initiative that touched nearly every corner of the organization.

My role covered both sides of the house: change management (OCM) and knowledge work from the technology perspective, and project management for the AI chatbot that would live on the portal. Two very different lenses. Same deadline.

I had anticipated how PM and OCM would complement each other. What I didn’t anticipate was just how naturally they’d pull in the same direction.

When I was tracking chatbot UAT timelines, I was also thinking about user readiness. When I was drafting knowledge articles, I was watching dependencies. The two disciplines weren’t competing for my attention. They were reinforcing each other.

I hadn’t fully expected that. And honestly? It was one of the most energizing professional experiences I’ve had.

When it’s go time, you go.

As the launch approached, the lead PM developed the test scripts. My job was to execute them — running through every scenario, documenting defects, and tracking what passed and what didn’t.

There was a lot of it. And it all needed to get done. So I got it done.

Looking back, that instinct to just pick it up and get it done? That was the PMP talking. One of the quieter lessons from earning my PMP is that project success isn’t about protecting your lane, it’s about protecting the outcome. When the work is in front of you and the deadline isn’t moving, the question stops being “Is this exactly my job?” and starts being “What needs to happen and how do I help make it happen?”

Change managers talk a lot about helping others navigate uncertainty. That September, I had to practice what I preached.

The chatbot went rogue.

I’d be telling an incomplete story if I left this part out.

Right before launch, the chatbot started behaving in ways we had not configured it to behave. It wasn’t doing what it was supposed to do. In the most technical terms I can offer, it was acting stupid.

After all the planning, the test scripts, the knowledge work, the coordination, we had a chatbot that wasn’t ready to meet users.

We made a call to delay the launch by a week.

In that moment, everyone owned a piece of the communication. The OCM lead handled the broader stakeholder outreach. My job was more targeted, reaching out directly to the specific group impacted from a technology and knowledge standpoint. It was a focused responsibility, but an important one.

And it reinforced something I’ve come to appreciate about large initiatives: everyone holds a thread. When the threads are pulled together, the message lands.

A delayed launch is not a failed launch. It reveals a team that cared enough about the user experience to get it right.

I wish I’d known this one thing.

If I could go back and tell myself one thing before stepping into this role, it would be this: No launch goes perfectly, and that’s okay.

There will always be something. A vendor behaving unexpectedly. A stakeholder who needs more runway. A chatbot that briefly forgets everything it learned.

The goal isn’t a flawless go-live. The goal is a team that knows how to adapt when things don’t go to plan, and users who feel supported on the other side of it.

That’s what change management is really about. Not controlling the outcome but being prepared to lead through whatever the outcome turns out to be.

A year later, I’m comfortable wearing two hats.

My PMP gave me a framework. My Change Management Manager role gave me a proving ground.

One year in, I’m still using both, sometimes within the same hour. The skills don’t compete. They compound.

And on the days when a chatbot goes rogue, and a launch gets pushed, and the whole team is sprinting toward a new deadline, I’m grateful to have both in my toolkit.

Because when it counts, you don’t get to pick just one hat. You just figure out how to wear them both.

If you want to assess the health of your organization, pay attention to your meetings.

Many organizations want a culture that promotes innovation, risk-taking, respect, safety, and inclusion. But does your organizational culture really live up to those values? There’s an easy way to find out.

If you want to understand an organization’s culture, don’t read its values statement or mission – sit in on its meetings.

Because meetings are culture in action. They show what works in a company — how people relate, communicate, make decisions, and spend time.

Meetings are microcosms of the organization. They’re where values become visible — not in posters or mission statements, but in habits.

Observe what happens in meetings, then decide what that reveals about your culture. Does it match what your organization wants to be?

Power in the Room

Who speaks — and who doesn’t — tells you everything about power and hierarchy.

• Sometimes one leader dominates and decisions are made by decree. Is it more of a speech or a meeting? Are others contributing? Or does silence equal safety?

If ideas flow freely, that’s a sign of trust and inclusion. Your organization is making space for dissent and curiosity.

Decision-Making in Real Time

Meetings reveal how your organization makes and executes decisions. Or do they get made at all?

• Cultures that prize accountability make decisions, document them, establish accountability and ownership, and move on.
• Cultures that fear conflict circle endlessly, adding another meeting to “discuss further.”

When teams leave a meeting knowing exactly who’s doing what and why, that’s a culture of clarity, alignment, and execution. When they leave unsure, that’s a sign of culture too.

Respect for Time = Respect for People

A meeting that starts late, lacks an agenda, or drifts without purpose isn’t just inefficient — it’s disrespectful. How does your organization use time?

• A disciplined meeting culture signals a disciplined organization. It tells employees their time is valuable, and that the organization runs on intention, not inertia.
• The opposite — calendar clutter, over-meeting, endless status updates – says, “We don’t trust, we don’t prioritize, and we don’t empower.”

Psychological Safety on Display

Meetings are the stage for psychological safety: the belief that people can take risks without fear. Let’s focus on what we can observe:

• Do team members share half-formed ideas or only polished ones?
• Do they admit what they don’t know or keep it to themselves and catch up later?
• When someone challenges the group, does it spark energy or awkward quiet?

The answers show whether learning and innovation are truly valued or just talked about.

Inclusion Is Visible

In today’s hybrid world, inclusion shows up (or doesn’t) in every meeting.

• Are remote voices invited in or do you have to be in the room to get a word in?
• Are junior employees heard or only leadership?
• Are meetings designed for all communication styles or just the loudest?

Inclusive meetings create belonging. Exclusive ones reinforce walls.

Meetings as a Mirror

Every organization has rituals that shape its culture. Meetings are one of the most powerful — and the most overlooked. Think about the culture you want and the one your meetings reveal.

• They can reinforce hierarchy or build empowerment.
• They can waste time or create alignment and performance.
• They can drain energy or build trust.

Meetings aren’t just about productivity; they’re about identity.

Take a hard look at your meetings, and you might just fix your culture.

Want a quick assessment tool? Use this one: Meeting Health Assessment

Want to explore this topic in more detail or learn more about Emerson? Hop on his calendar: Book a meeting with Rich

But it will expose the bad ones.

Artificial intelligence is getting better every day — faster than most organizations are prepared for. You can already prompt tools like ChatGPT to write a change strategy, build a stakeholder analysis, or draft a training plan. It’s tempting to think, If AI can generate the work, what’s the point of an organizational change manager?

The answer: AI won’t replace change managers. But it will expose the bad ones.

The AI Temptation: Fast ≠ Good

Let’s say someone inexperienced in organizational change types “create a change management strategy for an ERP implementation,” along with details of the change, into an AI tool. In seconds, they’ll get a clean-looking plan. But scratch the surface, and you’ll see red flags:

• Vague stakeholder groups. AI might list generic groups like “employees,” “executives,” and “vendors.” Or, if it does name the right key groups, it might miss critical subgroups like informal influencers, front-line supervisors, or hybrid workers who will experience the change differently.

Example: A federal agency rolled out a new digital records system. The AI-generated plan lumped all users together, ignoring that contractors, field staff, and union members had vastly different access needs and security protocols. Adoption tanked.

• Generic resistance strategies. You’ll often see suggestions like “hold town halls” or “communicate early and often” with no tie to the actual sources of resistance or past organizational dynamics.

Example: A manufacturing company facing automation fears got an AI-suggested plan full of emails and Q&A documents. What it needed was face time with supervisors and a forum for employees to express job security concerns directly. Trust eroded fast.

• Fuzzy metrics. AI loves to include success measures like “improved engagement” or “stakeholder satisfaction,” without defining what those mean, how they’ll be measured, or what’s considered a success.

Example: A utility company used AI to set KPIs for a change effort. The dashboard showed high “awareness,” but field crews were particularly confused about new protocols. That group saw no behavior change — just pretty charts.

• Activity without impact. Plans might include training sessions, change agent networks, or communications tactics that check the box but don’t connect to real behavior shifts.

Example: A retail chain launched a DEI initiative with AI-generated deliverables: monthly newsletters, mandatory training, team charters. All were executed, but without a change story, leadership modeling, and accountability mechanisms, nothing stuck.

In short, AI can mimic change management strategies and plans. But without practitioner judgment, it can’t deliver a robust, custom, and nuanced roadmap.

That’s where the divide will sharpen. Unqualified practitioners may think they can “outsource” the work to AI, and their results will suffer. Good practitioners will use AI to do better, faster, smarter work.

AI as a Force Multiplier for Good OCM

The heart of change management plan that works is an understanding of the people involved.

The job of a change practitioner is not to churn out templates, but to shape strategy, coach leaders, and spark behavior change in real human systems.

Used well, AI can help you do that more efficiently.

Drafting Faster, So You Can Think More
AI can jumpstart a communications plan or stakeholder map. But a seasoned practitioner adds the value: challenging assumptions, identifying hidden influencers, and tailoring messages to emotional undercurrents. Use AI to give you a first draft, then invest your energy where it matters most: insight, not formatting.

Surfacing Risks and Scenarios
Ask AI to play devil’s advocate. What risks are we missing? What if the change meets unexpected resistance from front-line supervisors? A good practitioner can use AI as a thinking partner to test scenarios and pressure-test plans.

Synthesizing Large Inputs
Faced with hundreds of survey responses or interview notes? AI can help you identify themes, sentiment, or confusion points — fast. But interpreting those insights, weighing their implications, and guiding next steps still require human discernment.

Enhancing Learning and Adoption
Given the right inputs from an expert human, AI tools can personalize learning experiences or simulate roleplays for different personas. A strong change manager knows how to embed these tools within a learning journey so they support, not distract from, behavior change.

A New Bar for Our Profession

Let’s be honest: not every change manager is up to the challenge. Some rely too heavily on templates, or default to tactics without strategy. AI will make it painfully obvious who is phoning it in.

But for those who are skilled, strategic, and people-savvy, AI is a powerful ally. The future of change management belongs to professionals who:

• Ask better questions than AI can.
• Understand the emotions and politics of organizational life.
• Use tools to enhance insight, not replace it.
• Bring a clear, human voice into ambiguous, high-stakes change.

AI may flood the market with “good enough” change content. But when the stakes are high — ERP rollouts, M&A, culture shifts — good enough won’t cut it. Leaders will look for change professionals who can think critically, act empathetically, and wield AI like a scalpel, not a crutch.

Those practitioners will rise. The rest will be replaced — not by AI, but by better humans.

Want to explore the topic in more detail? We’d love to chat: Book a meeting

Get the synergy you need from your tech and your people.

In most organizations, the tech stack is bigger than the skill stack. You’ve got collaboration suites, AI, automation tools, CRM platforms, data dashboards…and a workforce that’s still not quite sure how to get past the basics.

The result: expensive tools, underused features, and innovation that stalls in favor of business as usual.

Digital literacy shouldn’t be a daunting term. It isn’t about teaching everyone to code. It’s about helping people understand their tools well enough to do great work and imagine better ways of working.

A musician has a path to great performance. They learn the basics of their instrument. They practice for a long time. They get so fluent that they finally understand what the instrument can do – how it can be used to interpret a composition and convey meaning to the listener. That’s where the instrument is really valuable – in the hands of someone who really knows how to use it.

Your employees need a level of familiarity with their digital tools before they can truly perform.

When the tools get out of the way, the work gets better.

In a digitally literate organization, technology is a means to an end.

• People don’t think, “How do I format this?” They think, “What’s the clearest way to tell this story?”
• They don’t ask, “Where do I click to get the report?” They ask, “What decision are we trying to make?”
• Meetings aren’t spent troubleshooting; they’re spent problem-solving.

That only happens when people are confident and fluent in the tools they use every day. Until then, technology is friction. And friction kills performance.

Digital literacy is a prerequisite for innovation.

Leaders often say, “We want people to innovate. Our technology will help.” But until employees truly understand their tools, they won’t innovate beyond their function.

If I barely know how to use our collaboration platform, I’m not going to rethink how my team shares knowledge. If I don’t understand the basics of data visualization, I’m not going to propose a better way to share performance insights. I’ll stick to the old way, or just use the new tools to offer a shinier version of emails and spreadsheets.

Digital literacy unlocks three big shifts:

1. From compliance to creativity. People stop doing it the way the system says to do it and start asking, “What else could this system do for us?”
2. From local optimization to cross-functional innovation. Once employees truly know their tools, they can more easily see how a feature or workflow could help other teams, customers, or business lines—not just their own.
3. From IT-pushed change to business-led innovation. When Business understands what’s possible, they stop waiting for IT to drop new features from above. Instead, they bring informed ideas to the table and co-create solutions.

Rethink the IT–Business relationship.

In many organizations, IT is seen as the feature factory and the help desk. Business leaders ask, “What’s coming in the next release?” or “Can you fix this?”

But the dynamic you actually want is:

• Business drives innovation based on strategy, customer needs, and frontline insight.
• IT meets those needs and brings synergy with new ideas and collaborative, informed solutions, often using tools you already have.
• Together, the Business and IT decide when new functionality or adjacent products are truly needed.

This is only possible when employees and business function leaders have enough digital literacy to have a real conversation with IT — not just present a list of complaints or requests, or blindly accept the next update or tool.

Build digital literacy that actually changes behavior.

Here are five practical ways organizations can raise digital literacy and improve collaboration between IT, employees, and business leaders.

Treat digital literacy as a core competency.

Digital skills shouldn’t live in optional training modules that people get to when they have time.

• Build digital fluency into role expectations, performance goals, and development plans.
• Include digital skills in leadership competencies. (“Can you lead a digitally enabled team?”).
• Recognize and reward employees who simplify processes or innovate using existing tools.

When digital literacy is part of “good performance,” people make time for it.

Start with real work, not generic training.

Most digital training fails because it’s tool-centric and abstract. They get a “feature tour” and forget what they saw by Monday. Instead:

• Design learning around real, role-based scenarios: “How do we streamline approvals?” “How do we share project status without email threads?”
• Have teams bring live work (reports, workflows, decks) into training and improve them in real time using the tools.
• Make “before and after” examples visible so people see the payoff.

If employees can immediately use what they’ve learned to make today’s work easier, it’s real. You build momentum and buy-in.

Turn power users into internal coaches

Every organization has those people who quietly figure things out and help others. Make that informal support system official and visible.

• Identify “digital champions” in each function or business unit.
• Give them extra training and early access to new features.
• Ask them to host short, targeted sessions (like, “15 minutes to cut your reporting time in half”) and serve as go-to resources on their teams.

This keeps support close to the work and it humanizes digital learning. People are more likely to ask a peer than open a ticket.

Bring IT into the business and the business into IT

To move from “IT vs. the business” to one team:

• Invite IT to observe workflows, attend team meetings, and hear pain points directly.
• Include business leaders in technology roadmaps so they can weigh in on priorities and use cases.
• Co-create design sessions or pilots where IT, end users, and business owners shape the solution together.

The goal: IT isn’t just deploying tools; they’re solving problems with the people who own and live those problems.

Implement digital literacy with change management

Digital literacy is not just training. It’s change.

• Make a clear case for change: Why does digital fluency matter to our strategy, customers, and employees’ day-to-day lives?
• Use the essentials of change management: active sponsors, consistent messaging, tailored stakeholder engagement, realistic role-based training, measurement, and sustained reinforcement.

After training, measure behavior, not just logins:

• Are people using features that reduce manual work?
• Are cycle times improving?
• Are teams experimenting and sharing what they learn?

When you deliberately manage the change, digital literacy starts becoming part of your culture, not a one-off initiative.

The payoff isn’t just capability and performance; it’s readiness.

High digital literacy does more than help people use today’s tools. It makes your organization ready for what’s next.

When a new feature, adjacent product, or platform comes along:

• Employees already have the confidence to explore and learn.
• Business leaders know how to ask, “How could this help us deliver our strategy?”
• IT is plugged into real needs and can respond with solutions, not just more layers.

In other words, you don’t just adopt new technology. You use it to create new value.

We have a major retail food products client who operates globally. In their Mexico operation, they switched from standard IT reports to self-service Power BI reports. The problem: their existing reports didn’t reflect what the organization really needed. As a result, employees spent over 120 hours each month upgrading those reports — cleaning, reformatting, and calculating new indicators that were actually useful.

But as soon as these digitally savvy employees had access to the data in their new tool, Power BI, they created new reports and calculations directly in that tool. They suddenly had the views, formats, and indicators they needed. They saved that wasted time and instead spent it on creating new reports and views, as needed. The synergy between the powerful tool and digitally literate employees saved useless effort, reduced response time to leadership, and lowered complaints and requests to IT.

That’s the difference digital literacy makes. It’s not about mastering every system. It’s about giving people the confidence and fluency to focus on what actually matters: the work, the customer, and the future you’re trying to create.

Practical Ways to Help Employees Promote Your Change Project.

written by Michal Erder and Tara Schlosser

“You’ve been selected to join the Brand New, Never Done Before, Best Project Ever Change Champion Network! Please keep an eye out for a boring monthly meeting invitation, a bland quarterly newsletter, and don’t forget the list of tasks we’re going to send to you that we expect you to complete on top of your existing workload. Thanks for being a Change Champion!”

If you aren’t rolling your eyes – or worse – you are an extraordinarily generous and patient person, and maybe you should be our life coach.

Establishing change “champions” (or advocates or ambassadors or agents) is popular for organizations implementing major changes. It makes a lot of sense to enlist employees to engage with the new system or process and promote it to their peers.

A change champion network is a group of early adopters and influencers that drive change – not just by communicating, but by embodying the change in their activities and beliefs.

The people involved in the network should understand the change – its benefits, impacts, and timelines – believe in it, and have a vested interest in others coming along for the ride.

The problem with change champion networks isn’t the concept; it’s the execution, which often leaves people feeling underwhelmed, overworked, and at worst, frustrated.

How do change projects get it wrong?

• The wrong enlistment. Are they volunteers? Or are they voluntold? If you “enlist” people who haven’t expressed interest, you get a network that’s capable but not motivated.
• The wrong recruits. Do they have time? Often people are chosen because they are high-performing, influential, and good communicators. That’s who every project wants, right? That’s the problem. We often see the same people pulled into activities over and over. If you punish performance, you get an elite team of burned out employees.
• The wrong timing. Asking people to be part of a change network after the change is already designed and built feels disingenuous. You can’t have an impact on a change if the decisions have already been made.
• The wrong schedule. Often, project leads create the plan around what the project needs. If you schedule meetings or events during busy days or crunch time for the employee, they have to choose between this new gig and their real job. Even if they want to help, they might not.
• The wrong first impression. Change networks usually have kickoff events. These sessions often miss the mark: a generic overview PowerPoint the change, a quick demo of new functionality or processes, then a discussion that is a) too quick, b) too high-level, or c) dives deep into one element that a few people in the room care about. A bad kickoff – ironically – usually ends with a list of things the project team needs the champions to go off and do.
• The wrong tone. What is the vibe? Are the change champions defensive? Do they fear criticizing the project or pushing back on details? What have their bosses told them? What have the project team members said? There are many reasons people might feel like they can’t say what’s on their minds. If they don’t feel like they can be honest, you will be met with deafening silence. That’s the opposite of what you want.
• The wrong support. Teams sometimes give their champions a packet of information and set them loose. That’s, at minimum, a recipe for inconsistency. Some will thrive and create momentum, and some will flounder.
• The wrong rewards. Even if people have time, get engaged, and do exactly what you want, with enthusiasm, what then? They get a thank you email?

So what?

When any of these things happen, there are two major consequences. First, your change champion network is not effective. Champion networks are meant to bolster excitement and engagement among employees; that means the champions have to be informed, motivated, and excited in the first place. If they’re not, the broader stakeholder groups certainly won’t get on board.

Second, and maybe most importantly, failed change champion networks can erode the trust and credibility in the organization itself. So, the next time you say “come join this network of your peers” people might dread the assignment – and the change itself. That’s like the opposite of a change champion network; it’s a change haters’ network.

So how can we build networks that matter?

How do we create a change network that works?

Get them in time to make a difference. Change champions are prized because they’re so knowledgeable and influential to the employees you need to drive this change. So treat them like the experts they are – get them on board in time to give you input on stakeholder impacts and the best ways to communicate. Then…actually take their advice. Don’t just ask for their wisdom for the sake of engagement. In other words: get them involved early and then help them help the project.

Choose wisely. This is more art than science. What’s right for your organization and your project will be unique to you. Here are some things to consider.

• If you use volunteers, you will probably get people with the time, energy, and desire to promote the change. However, you might not get a lot of them. And you might not get the right characteristics: early adopters, high performers, and influential employees.
• If you “voluntell” people that they will be champions, you can hand-pick people. The advantages are many: you can ensure they have the right characteristics, roles, and distribution in the organization. The downside: they might not have capacity or interest. Moreover, if you ask leaders to select people, be careful – they tend to pick the same folks repeatedly.
• The best approach is often a hybrid. Solicit volunteers for the capacity and motivation. And hand-pick others – but give all of them the capacity and motivation. That might mean taking work off their plates and offering incentives. More on that below.

Be transparent and specific. Have conversations with champions about what you expect. Do you want them to be influencers? Communicators? Or do you just need them to know about the change so they can answer questions? Are they responsible for a particular team? What are the activities you expect, and what information should they convey and collect? How much time will you need from them and when?

Help them get the time. Work with their managers to lessen workloads, backfill parts of their roles, or move deadlines. The change project is important, right? Then, leadership should clear the way for success. If we want people to do more, we need to help them make time to do it. And it’s not just on the champion and their manager; make sure the project team’s schedule makes sense for the champions and their day-to-day work teams.

Set the tone. You want your network to be nimble, empowered, and effective.

• From the start, set up the network for open, honest, fast, two-way communication. If that means certain leaders shouldn’t be at the kickoff meeting, so be it.
• Make sure the person leading the group is someone everyone knows and trusts.
• Give champions just the information they need, in simple terms that make sense to them.
• Let them question the what, why, and how.

Throughout the project, make it easy to give feedback and get information. Quick Teams chats, Slack, whatever – the longer champions wait for answers to questions, the longer champion and employee engagement wait. You lose momentum.

Support your champions. They need tools, content, and coaching. Don’t just give them the deck from your kickoff meeting. They need assets customized for their audiences – the right language, content, and tone. Don’t assume your champions are ready to stand in front of a room of their peers and present. Some might need advice, resources, practice sessions – whatever is right for them.

Let the network drive. They need the space and time to tell you what they need, and to get it. For example, we often pack the agenda for our change champion network meetings, when what they really need is time…to ask their questions and talk about what matters to them and their teams. Those discussions are so much more valuable than a project team member showing slides and talking at them.

Remove obstacles. The best plans and the best champions will run into challenges. For example, maybe some of their peers aren’t participating in scheduled activities. Maybe employees are simply refusing to adopt the change, in favor of the old ways of working. That’s not the champion’s problem to solve alone. It’s their job to raise issues to the project and organizational leaders, so the entire team can combat resistance.

Break it up and make it fun. Creative breaks or events can be a breath of fresh air, revitalizing the team.

• Offer prizes for completing champion tasks.
• Give out champion swag.
• Spotlight champions who are going above and beyond.
• Hold funny photo contests for meetings or sessions related to the project. For example, in-person sessions could be themed around funny hats, favorite sports team gear, or funny backgrounds (for virtual meetings).
• Hold a “gif contest.” Have people submit gifs that describe their last meeting about the project.
• Host a roundtable for people to share real stories about their experience with the new tool or process, and how their team reacted to it.
• Hold “labs” where champions get 1:1 time with technical developers to talk in detail about the change.
• Conduct sessions with high-level leaders to give change champions more visibility with leadership.

Reward their hard work. Your change champions are doing a job they weren’t hired for – or compensated for. So, what’s in it for them, other than the benefits of the change project? Figure that out with leadership. Reinforcements range from recognition and awards to monetary bonuses to perks to promotions. If the champions are critical to a change that will bring revenue and success to the organization, certainly it can afford to support them.

The bottom line: a good change champion network is POWERFUL. It can be the margin of victory for your project, creating awareness, engagement, adoption, and performance. It’s worth doing right.

Want to explore the topic in more detail? We’d love to chat: Book a meeting

Change management is better than what you’re doing.

My biggest pet peeve is when leaders use “change management” as a buzzword.

The meeting is ending, people are starting to gather up their things or open an email, and a leader mentions as an afterthought “…and we’ll definitely need change management on this one.” Everyone nods, continues to pack their bags, and heads out the door.

There are a few possible scenarios that follow.

• Everyone forgets the mention of change management until after go-live, when adoption is slow and people are getting frustrated. Then someone slaps together additional training or job aids.
• The leader assigns “change management” to a team member with no change management experience, leading to months of stress for this person, who does their best without having the skills or tools (and ultimately doesn’t make an impact, through no fault of their own).
• The team brings in a change management team or expert (internal or external to the company) but gives them weak direction, few resources, and little influence. They struggle to get what they need from stakeholders and never make any real difference.

Don’t call whatever that is change management.

The reason this bothers me is that change management is one of the few disciplines that gets mentioned and then immediately overlooked. You won’t hear a leader say the first part: “…and we need some operational support” without a second part: “…to make sure the process can integrate with our technology.”

As change managers, we are begging for the second half of the sentence. Why do you need change management?

• Are you worried about audiences embracing the change because it’s a dramatic departure from the norm?
• Is there a lot of new content for people to take in and you’re worried they won’t remember on the job?
• Are you worried about people knowing and hitting key deadlines?
• Are there teams across the organization who need to come together to make this change work?
• Are there stakeholder groups that don’t want this change?
• Does the effort have an extended timeline and need prolonged momentum?

Once you know the “why,” you can plan the “how” – the change management solution. For example,

• If you’re worried about people embracing the change, focus the solution on their motivation — connecting to their purpose, showing them the value they personally will see from the change.
• If you need change management because there’s so much new content, put the training solution into high gear. Pull out all the stops to make sure the content is visible, accessible, and digestible (especially once you go live).
• If people coming together makes you nervous, focus on cross-functional collaboration and creating spaces to bring ideas together.

The “how” gets you to the “what:” adoption and performance — people doing things not just differently, but differently in the way that is needed to realize value.

To use change management successfully, don’t leave it as an afterthought. Explore why you need change management and how you will do it, to get to the goals of your initiative.

Want to explore the topic in more detail? We’d love to chat: Book a meeting

From Training to Performance.

Every year, government agencies invest heavily in training. They develop courses, fill their LMS platforms, and send employees through hours of instruction. Yet many leaders still ask: Why aren’t we seeing better performance results?

They’re seeing the gap between learning and doing.

In high-stakes, high-accountability environments like government, this gap isn’t just frustrating, it is lost opportunity to truly develop people potential and deliver on the promise of exceptional government services.

Agencies don’t just need people to know policies, systems, and processes; they need them to apply that knowledge accurately and consistently.

So, what’s getting in the way and how can we fix it?

The Challenges

Training in a Vacuum

Too often, government training is disconnected from daily work. Employees learn about systems or policies in theory, not in the context of real scenarios. That abstraction makes learning easy to forget and hard to apply.

Over-reliance on Information Transfer

We often assume that knowing leads to doing. But behavior science says otherwise. Knowing the steps to a process doesn’t guarantee following them correctly under pressure. Training that emphasizes knowledge over performance misses the point.

Lack of Reinforcement

Learning fades without follow-up. When there’s no coaching or accountability, people quickly revert to old habits, especially when those habits feel faster or safer.

Cultural and Systemic Barriers

Sometimes the problem isn’t training—it’s the environment. Employees may be trained to collaborate, but if performance systems reward individual output, they won’t change. When systems, leadership behaviors, and training are misaligned, progress stalls.

Bridging the Gap

Training and performance support must be designed with work performance in mind, from the start. Here are five ideas and two technologies to make that shift:

Meet people where they are.

The Five Moments of Need model by Bob Mosher and Dr. Conrad Gottfredson reframes learning as a continuous process. It identifies five key moments when people most need support: when learning something new, wanting to learn more, applying knowledge, solving problems, or adapting to change. The key is to align learning strategies to the moments of need. Formal training is important when learning something new, while on-demand performance support helps with application and change.

Example: A federal HR specialist uses formal training to learn a new hiring system (New), quick reference guides while processing applications (Apply), and updated resources when policy guidance changes (Change).

Build for behavior, not just knowledge.

Start with the end in mind: What do we want people to do differently? Define the critical behaviors, then design training that helps people practice and get feedback.

Example: Instead of lecturing on conflict-of-interest policy, simulate real scenarios where employees must make judgment calls and receive feedback in real time.

Align training with systems and culture.

If training teaches one thing but systems reward another, behavior change won’t stick. Before designing new learning, ask: What are we rewarding?

Example: Review performance metrics, SOPs, and feedback loops to ensure they reinforce the new behaviors, not the old ones.

Ground training in the real world.

Learning should feel familiar and actionable. Use real cases, language, and systems employees recognize.

Example: Partner with front-line managers to identify everyday challenges and build your training activities around them.

Reinforce with coaching and feedback.

Learning is a process, not an event. Incorporate follow-up discussions, manager coaching, and check-ins that show the behavior still matters.

Example: Create a “learning transfer plan” for supervisors to reinforce key behaviors during team meetings.

Make learning and performance support personal.

A Learning Experience Platform (LXP) delivers personalized, just-in-time learning tailored to each employee’s role, goals, and recent activity. It moves learning from compliance-driven to performance-focused. These systems are more affordable and capable than ever and provide a flexible, mobile resource tailored to the individual.

Example: A Contract Officers Representative (COR), updating a contract record might receive a recommendation for a short video on managing vendor performance — right when it’s most relevant.

Remove friction wherever you can.

A Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) provides step-by-step, on-screen guidance inside the applications employees use every day. This helps them perform tasks accurately without leaving their workflow.

Example: When a federal employee logs into a new acquisition system, a DAP can guide them through creating a requisition, explaining each field along the way. The result: faster adoption, fewer errors, and greater confidence.

The Opportunity Ahead

Government agencies face complex challenges, policy shifts, tight budgets, legacy systems, and evolving missions. But they also have a tremendous opportunity to lead with intention.

When agencies shift their focus from training delivery to performance enablement, they close the learning–doing gap. They create not just informed employees, but capable, confident professionals ready to deliver excellence where it matters most: on the job.

Want to explore the topic in more detail with John? Hop on his calendar: Book a meeting with John