We all manage big change in our personal lives.

We even make big change look easy.

For example: We leave home, we go to university, we get married, we buy a house, we move jobs.

And the biggest change of all? We might even have kids.

Mostly these changes are welcomed, embraced, pursued with vigour even!

“But our people at work, actively resist change!”

Leading and managing change is a critical skill for you and your firm.

And yet our people (or at least some of our people) actively resist changing. They resist moving desks. They resist a new phone system or filing system or book keeping system.

How come?

Well, if your people resist change, guess what?

You need to change the way you manage change.

If you stay the same. If you manage change the same. If your people continue to resist the same, the consequences can be dangerous:

• Your growth and profits do not grow but your competitors do
• Your client's demand more and they look elsewhere if you fail to change and adapt your products, services and ways of working to suit them
• Like client's expectations, technology moves forward, it’s always changing

And the answer is…

The answer is the 3-part-pattern of successful change.

Part one – appeal to people’s logic – provide logical argument for change. This is necessary but never enough.

Part two – appeal to people’s feelings – provide emotional reasoning for change. Emotional buy-in reduces resistance.

Part three – make the path to change blatantly obvious – provide obvious, simple, easy next steps for people to take.

Embrace this 3-part-pattern and you turn change into a ‘competitive advantage’ for your firm.

Now for the ‘How you do it’ bit.​