Change Management Must Die, Part 3

Recap: Been There, Covered That

• Change Management Must Be Completely Reimagined for the AI Era... or Die: See Change Management Must Die: Part 1, and Part 2, and 40 Things I’ve Learned About Change for full details

All Change Models, Tools, Processes, Practices...

Including, but not limited to...

• Models: ADKAR, Agile, Bridges, Burke-Litwin, Kotter, Lewin, McKinsey 7-S, Prosci
• Assessments: Behavioral Needs Assessments, Case for Change Analysis, Change Readiness Analysis, Feedback Analysis, Force-Field Analysis, Gap Analysis, Kirkpatrick Assessments, Stakeholder Analysis, RACI Analysis, Resistance Analysis, SWOT Analysis, etc.
• Plans, Roadmaps: Adoption Plans, Behavioral Change Plans, Change Champion Training Plans, Change Plans, Coaching Plans, Communication and Engagement Plans, Current State/ Future State Roadmaps, Feedback Tools, Implementation Roadmaps, Leadership and Sponsor Coaching Plans, KPIs/ OKRs/ Results, Progress Reports, Project Management Plans, RACI Matrices, Resistance Management Plans, Sponsor Role Maps, Stakeholder Maps, Team Charters, Training Plans, Training Plans, Transformation Office Plans, etc.
• Change Management Certification Programs: By both companies and academic institutions
• Change Management Leadership, Team Members
• Change Management Data-Collection, Reporting

...Must Be Reimagined or Redesigned with Five AI Era Criteria

1. Living by Taijitu Principles

(Taijitu = Yin-Yang.) Change management must dedicate itself equally to helping the organization change and enhancing each individual’s ability to change. There is no rapid organizational change without its people changing just as quickly.

We must radically change how we approach “managing change.” One of the primary KPIs for AI Era Change Management must be: Enhancing each individual’s ability to create and control (drive, guide, determine) their own destiny in an increasingly disruptive, volatile, and uncertain world.

Two Biggest Challenges:

• The Need for Courageous Leaders: In theory, employee-centricity is taught in change management certifications and built into change strategies. But let’s be brutally honest — with rare exceptions — that’s not how it’s practiced. Mostly leaders use change management to drive Organizational Effectiveness, Risk-Mitigation, Progress Tracking, and corporate-centered Communications. We need courageous leaders who embrace that the AI Era greatly enhances their ability to do a lot more tailoring to help every individual change and succeed, not just the company. And lead that way.
• Doing the Really Hard Work of Truly Being Employee-Centered: Solving for “Here’s the change, who might be resisting it?” is quite different and a lot easier than “How do we best help each individual go through this change, and master change themselves?” That’s why Assessments and Upskilling need to be disrupted and created anew.

2. Assessments Reimagined: Unlocking Value

• Courageous Reporting: The biggest issue with change management assessments as we enter the AI Era is NOT about assessment tools or processes. It’s the need for courageous reporting of assessment results. 78% to 92% of valid and significant bottom-up needs, concerns, and pushbacks are ignored, bypassed, or labeled as “resistance” by change sponsors and senior teams. (Jensen Future of Work Study). The most important assessment value that change management can unlock is speaking hard bottom-up truths to power, and standing up for those truths until they are addressed.
• I/O Psych and Change Gurus, Meet Digital Engineers: The AI Era will send one-off Hogan/DiSC/Predictive Index/etc and Stakeholder/RACI/Resistance/etc assessments to a secondary level. AI Era People Scientists will perform many of their change assessments and behavioral analysis using dynamic analytics built into work technologies. We will finally follow the model of how engineers have been building behavioral change into social media for years. For more about how that’s done (for good and evil), watch the Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma.
• Walk a Mile in Their Shoes: The most valuable assessments come from integrating quantitative results (data analytics) with qualitative data (interviews, experiences). Watch any episode of Undercover Boss. It exemplifies practical, practiced bottom-up empathy. Bosses literally walk a mile in their workforce’s shoes. Change management must do a lot more of the same — or at least shadowing those going through changes — so we have a more complete, detailed picture of ground-level truths.

3. Upskilling Reimagined

As covered in Part 2, this includes 1. Upskilling in Universal Soft-Skills 2. Upskilling in Role/Project-Specific Skills 3. Upskilling in Technical/Digital Savvy (far beyond AI basics) Skills.

We must move from Easy Change to Hard Change. From its inception, change management has mostly focused on Easy Change: Helping people embrace change initiatives that are going to happen anyway, with or without them changing themselves. As globally-renowned coach Michael Bungay Stanier says: These are You-Plus changes — (people doing a mandated task or process differently than they had before) — that are easily spreadsheetable and project manageable.

The AI Era demands that we up our game, adding Hard Change to our toolkit. These are You 2.0 changes, that require personal transformation, and making profound personal choices that require much greater Unlearning, Letting Go of the Past, and Relearning.

The hardest upskilling work: Every individual will have to let go of old versions of themselves. Change management — while still driving organizational change — will have to help individuals take greater personal agency and control of their own destiny, and get them past their personal versions of the Dunning-Kruger effect. (Especially true for Change Sponsors and C-Suite execs).

4. Human/ AI Agent Partnership Creation

Change management will have to play on a whole new strategic field.

As strategist and business investor Usman Sheikh says, “For decades, we built firms around a simple truth: human judgment required human layers. AI isn’t here to make these coordination cycles faster. Every interaction trains the system. Institutional intelligence compounds daily. Knowledge becomes infrastructure, not personal property. AI’s real disruption isn’t speeding up old tasks; it’s making entire coordination systems obsolete. The only sustainable advantage left is orchestrating judgment at scale.”

That core concept and new AI capability utterly destroys the past and current views of “managing change.” AI Era change management requires re-architecting the way we do work, reskilling, and upskilling — forming new human/AI relationships and partnerships. THAT’s the new front of the coming revolution!

5. Lead Change Integrator

This is how change management adds game-changing, exponential value in the AI Era! Change management has the opportunity to be THE crucial integrator — of organizational and team and individual needs ... of hard and soft skills ... of uniquely human traits and AI Era digitally-driven tools, processes, and solutions.

The one universal truth about change: We all struggle with, and need to get better at, changing together. That’s what all stakeholders, tools and technologies, processes, goals and objectives have always had in common — our need to work together to change — aligned around shared successes. We all need help connecting all the change-dots together. THAT’s change management’s new role!

The AI Era has created new opportunities — a call to action:

To translate organizational and digital transformation into people transformation.

Will we step up?

Change Management is facing its crucible moment. Will we rise to the occasion — disrupting, reimagining, changing how we manage change?

What will we stand for? Or against? What is sacred? What will we no longer tolerate? Along with our partners in HR, Training, Learning and Development, and IT, how will we be remembered five, ten, twenty years from now?

Next: Part 4, Asking Completely Different Questions

Bill Jensen has been a change management leader for nearly 40 years. He 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. Email: bill@simplerwork.com.