Recap: Been There, Covered That
Getting Started: Reimagining Change Management by Asking Completely Different Questions
“The right unit of exploration is the question, not the solution.” ~ IDEO CEO Tim Brown
Personal, for All Involved with Change Management
- What drives you, excites you, motivates you? Do your passions lean more towards driving change to achieve organizational effectiveness, operational efficiencies, and transforming structures and processes? Or do they lean more towards driving human-centered change — helping people serve other people?
- Five years from now — with AI integrated into much of our lives — what do you want your legacy to be? What impact on others will you be remembered for the most? And what must you do radically differently to achieve that?
Questions to Disrupt and Reimagine Change Management for the AI Era
Creating a new human-centered, human/AI agent partnership by asking... “Why...” “Why not...” “How might we...” “What’s the real problem here...” “How do we create value...” “What do we care about...” ...types of questions.
- In the AI Era: What needs to change about how we manage change? Why?
- How have AI tools and disruptive AI capabilities driven this need to change?
- Scale of 1-5: How ready is our organization for these changes? (1: Easy, very ready; 5: Not at all)
- Scale of 1-5: How disruptive must we be in changing how we manage change? (1: Minor tweaks around the edges; 5: Major reimagining)
- What are our biggest barriers to achieving that level of disruption?
- What does AI Era success look like for how we do change management?
- What does failure look like?
- What are the consequences of getting this wrong?
- How will we lead, drive, and manage change differently?
- How will we create or enhance the most valuable human/AI agent partnership?
- How will we ensure that that partnership is human-centric?
- What are our biggest upskilling needs? (From three perspectives: Senior leader view, workforce view, and competitive market-view.)
- What is our AI Era Change Management charter? Will we be lead integrator for how our organization AND workforce manage change?
- What new measures and assessments will be used to our track success?
- What different sets of data will we need to collect and monitor to use for change management decision-making?
- How will we staff and lead change management differently? What change management roles will go away? What new roles will we need to create?
WALK A MILE IN YOUR EMPLOYEES’ SHOES: HOW WOULD THEY ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS?
- Can you achieve your personal dreams and goals by working here?
- Are we providing the retraining, reskilling, and personal agility support you need to succeed, thrive, and grow in the AI Era?
- Are our company-built tools and processes as good or better than any app or tool you can access, buy, or build for your own use?
- Do you believe our leaders have your back as they lead us into the AI Era?
- Do you trust our organization’s leaders to focus on your needs and your teammates’ needs as they lead us into the AI Era?
- Has our use of AI made it easier for you to work smarter, not harder? Saved you time each day? Reduced your aggravations and effort?
- Does our organization use AI to better know and understand you and your needs — tailoring what you need to succeed, thrive, and grow?
- Do the skills that our company evaluates and develop to help the company succeed also help you succeed within a highly disruptive, AI-driven future?
CORE AI ERA SOFT SKILLS QUESTIONS
Pre-, during, and post- change initiatives: Have we leveraged Gen AI and AI agents in our tools, processes, training, and development in order to...
- Help changees deepen their self-awareness, doing introspective work to better prepare themselves for disruptive changes?
- Help changees create and deliver clear, concise, and compelling communication, in person, and across all media?
- Help changees be more creative, curious, and imaginative in understanding and solving problems?
- Help changees leverage critical thinking and ask the best questions?
- Help changees in personal agility: rapidly unlearning and relearning?
- Help changees practice empathy, understanding and incorporating other people’s needs and perspectives?
- Help changees leverage courage when confronted with situations that call for them to change their ways of working, behaviors, and thinking?
AI ERA WORKFORCE CHANGE READINESS SURVEY QUESTIONS
(Likert-style scoring: Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree.) For changee self-assessments, and/or to be tweaked and leveraged by change-drivers in their assessments...
- I can easily define what makes me who I am, and how that drives my personal vision and passions
- My daily routines and workday reflect my personal long-term goals and plans
- I have the courage and ability to be true to myself at all times, regardless of the consequences
- I willingly, and consistently, step into most situations that take me outside my comfort zone
- I am highly skilled at learning to take risks and push my limits through AI-driven prototyping, exploration
- I work each day with great curiosity and imagination, constantly exploring new possibilities
- I am consistently resilient under pressure and can easily adapt to frequent and disruptive changes
- I am highly skilled at disrupting myself faster than the market does it to me.
- I am highly skilled in fluid situations and social networks — where leading through influence matters, and tasks and demands change constantly
- I am disciplined in achieving physical, mental, and spiritual fitness in the face of daily work pressure and disruptions
Final Steps
1. Select your top five, most-important, most-revealing questions...
2. Then ask Gen AI the following...
PROMPT: “Your task is to revolutionize how your company self-disrupts in the AI Era, with a focus on reimagining both organizational and individual transformation. This mission encourages you to challenge conventional change management practices and adopt agile, human-centered strategies. Develop five strategic areas of focus, each with a key question and actionable steps to inspire innovative and disruptive thinking.“
(That prompt was written with Gen AI’s help after it studied Parts 1 — 4 of this series. You could do the same for your exploration. Include links to Parts 1 — 4 as Gen AI source material after the prompt.)
3. Compare your results with Gen AI’s
The AI Era has created revolutionary, disruptive opportunities — a call to action: To translate organizational and digital transformation into people transformation. Will we step up?
(Upcoming: Final Installment: We left the most crucial, era-defining question for last...)
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.
