Change Management Must Die

A Roadmap for the AI Era

TIME-TO-DIE PROBLEM

Most change management ideas and methodologies are hopelessly out of date, focused mainly on organizational needs — while individual needs horrifically get short-shrift in a constantly disruptive world. Warning: AI-ing current models and assumptions will only make things worse!

Born a century ago as Human Relations Management in the 1930s… Rebooted in the 1980s-1990s as Learning Organizations, Managing Transitions, and Managing Change… With certified methodologies in the 1990s… The core idea is to help people and systems change, in a focused/structured way. Yet much of change management thinking is stuck in the 1990s — the decade that gave us the WorldWideWeb and DVDs. How quaint!

What yesteryear’s outdated change models don’t get:

• We all work in the highly disruptive Attention Economy. Workers are now interrupted up to 275 times a day! In a world overflowing with too much information, attention is a limited and valuable resource. Ever-shorter attention spans mean that engaging employees’ hearts, minds, and behaviors must be highly personalized, tailored, and immediately useful — vastly different than yesteryear’s change models.
• Disruptive changes are no longer anticipated, planned, and distributed from above. They’re hitting everyone, from all sides, hundreds of times a day. Globally, 80% of workers say they don’t have the time or energy to effectively do their jobs. And employee engagement hovers near all-time lows. Yesteryear’s corporate-centered approaches to change are frustrating, burning out, and pissing off the workforce.
• Change is always personal. Immutable law. Stop driving it like it’s not.

Change Management, as we know it, must be radically disrupted...or die!

TIME-FOR-REIMAGINING SOLUTIONS

Change models, strategies, and approaches need to be redesigned for a new era — where daily disruptions are the norm, and continuous disruption is personal, not just organizational. And redesigned for the AI Era, where deep tailoring and personalizing is easily doable and cheap. 21st century change models must have two parts working in balanced Yin-Yang harmony:

• Developing 21st century new workforce-centered analytics, and new human-centered designs.
• Integrating workforce-centered measures and designs into company-centric measures, tools, processes. Fully balanced.

If Change Management Is to Create Value in the AI Era…

Three major Must Dos: Employee-Centered Courage, Taijitu Principles, People Science

1. Courage

We need three kinds of courage if we are to address all that is broken in Change Management. Breaker Courage from everyone who initiates organizational change. Believer Courage from the direct reports of Breaker-level executives. Builder Courage from all the Doers. (See captions for who’s who.)

WHAT’s NEW and Currently Missing: Each of those three groups require relentless courage to face new AI Era ground-level truths, to speak those truths to power, and to be the passionate proxy for all the user-centered needs that must be addressed, designed, and built... Passionate Proxy-ing is woefully lacking in change management as currently practiced. We must create a balanced approach in meeting both organizational needs and each individual’s needs when managing change.

2. Reimagine Change Management with Taijitu Principles

The Yin-Yang symbol, also known as the Taijitu, (tie•gee•too), is a fundamental concept in Chinese philosophy. It represents the dualistic nature and the interdependence and balance between opposing forces or elements.

Change Management must dedicate itself EQUALLY to helping the organization change AND enhancing each individual’s ability to change — in interdependence and balance. There is no managed change without both halves getting equal energy, effort, discipline. Both the organization and every individual within it must have enhanced agency over their ability to thrive in a disruptive future.

Taijitu Principles for Change Management in the AI Era include:

• Invest equally in the AI Era seven skills for individual success, as you do in organizational initiatives and priorities to help the company succeed. AI Agents now make this much easier to do.
• Practice Breaker and Believer Courage: Passionately advocate for the change needs of individual performers to C-level decision-makers. Don’t solely shill for the organization’s need to drive change.
• Partner with HR to hard-wire much more relationship-building and creating deep human connections during change processes. Change stickiness happens through personal relationships. Workday Study: As AI usage grows, employees will crave even more human connection.
• When doing Change Readiness Assessments and Stakeholder Needs Analyses driven by NextGen technologies, honor the Disruptive Law of 1:1: Which states that for every person who is empowered and better/ faster/ more effective because of the disruptive technology… There is also an equal, and opposite, impact. Another person’s life just got a whole lot more complicated, uncertain, and possibly perilous. Work hard to find the people whose future is disrupted, and to understand their needs. Then design solutions for those needs.
• Partner with IT to design tailored, personalized digital work experiences, tools, and support. AI tools and technologies give you the ability to hyper-personalize every employee’s change experience. Every individual can change themselves faster, better, and more easily when the experience and tools are tailored to their needs.
• Follow humanity-centered design principles: Help every individual improve their lives, and take control of their own destiny, by tailoring your solutions to their very human needs.

We’re already seeing the early stages of AI Era Taijitu Principles:

• Vaccine maker Moderna has merged its IT and HR functions. They already have over 3,000 tailored versions of ChatGPT, designed to facilitate specific tasks in workforce-centric ways. Tracey Franklin, Moderna’s Chief People and Technology Officer, and CIO Brad Miller spent years assessing and designing for the needs of each department based on the optimal mix of human workers and tech systems.
• UKG’s Bryte AI provides both Employee and People Leader views on HR issues.
• Google’s Project Oxygen uses employee feedback and data analytics to identify key management behaviors that contribute to employee satisfaction, leading to more personalized and supportive work environments.
• Accenture’s Future Workforce Initiative focuses on continuous learning and development, ensuring that employees are equipped to adapt to new roles and technologies, fostering a more resilient and engaged workforce.

3. Assess, Design, Plan, Execute, As People Scientists

People scientists are needed to understand how company tools, infrastructure, and Next Gen AI technologies impact human behavior. This behavioral science role within Change Management will be an integrated mix of what’s currently housed in silos within HR, IT, Operations, Leadership Development, Training Development, User Design, and more.

To jumpstart and disrupt your thinking… Here are a few of the AI Era change needs you should be assessing, designing, planning, and executing as people scientists, balanced with Taijitu principles…

FOR MORE, see 40 Things I’ve Learned About Change.

Next Steps: It’s up to us whether Change Management deserves to die an outdated death, or live on in the AI Era.

Note: I have made my living in Change Management for four decades. I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. As the AI Era dawns... It is absolutely time for Change Management, as we now know it, to die. And to be reimagined with courageous Taijitu Principles.

Next: Part 2, The Only Path Forward

Bill Jensen is a seasoned strategy and transformation executive, advisor to C-suite execs, globally-known keynote speaker, and author of nine best-selling leadership and change books, including Simplicity, Disrupt, Future Strong, and The Day Tomorrow Said No. Reach him at bill@simplerwork.com.