Consider your project as a roadmap spread across six major milestones. By the time you reach the 5th milestone, the project stakeholders have gained a much better understanding of what’s changing, why it’s changing, and what it means to them. These are all important to help them adapt to the change and make it part of their work.
However, does reaching the 5th milestone mean they are always in their comfort zone? Not necessarily. Everyone is different and approaches change in a different way. This cycle is in no way a simple linear pathway through the six stages.
Instead, I really like the way Matt Mansell, a transformation architect, puts it. When speaking about models like the ChangeCycle, he said “I prefer to see them as a heuristic that might give me some insight for designing change experiments”. Love that.
But here’s the beauty of Stage 5: By this point, people are feeling more confident about their understanding of the changes. Their thoughts and understanding are more pragmatic. And their behavior is more productive.
You may not always appreciate or like the alterations, but you can now navigate them with the people on the project with a better foundation to help others move from an understanding to a greater awareness.
The image below is from the ChangeCycle (dot) com website.
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