Dear Deb #2 - Enabling Change

This week’s question comes from: Candace Dingman, COO, Lifepoint Business Services at Lifepoint Health:

“In Global Business Services, we often acknowledge that change management is critical—yet it is still under-funded, under-led, or treated as a communications exercise rather than a core capability. Based on your experience advising and observing GBS transformations globally, what are the three non-negotiable change management strategies leaders must execute to ensure transformation success—and where do even seasoned GBS leaders misjudge or under-invest? And how do you measure change management success beyond traditional metrics like adoption rate or training?”

Dear Candace,

I’m so very glad you asked this question—because it not only allows me to rant, it exposes one of GBS’s favorite illusions.

Read any treatise on GBS and the majoir failure is done to inability to manage change. 

But we fund it like it’s optional, or staff it with comms ladies, or deploy as a tick-the-box.

Before anything else, let’s get one thing straight:

We don’t manage change.
We enable (stakeholders to) change.

And most GBS organizations don’t do it particularly well.

Change in GBS is still treated like a fire drill, putting out noise, helping people push new buttons, only to go back to business as usual once the alarm stops. That’s not transformation; it’s rehearsal.

This isn’t conjecture. It showed up clearly in the Everest Group Sourcing Change report: The State of Play in GBS Change Management, which I was privileged to write: change is almost universally described as “critical,” and almost universally under-designed, under-funded, and under-owned.

So, let’s answer your questions directly.

Three Non-Negotiables for Enabling Change

1. Explain the Change in Their Terms—and Make the Ask Explicit

Most GBS change efforts don’t fail because people resist them.
They fail because we explain change in the words we like, not the words stakeholders need to hear.

We talk about:

• operating models

• efficiency

• scale

• maturity

What stakeholders are actually thinking:

• What am I losing?

• What control just walked out the door?

• What risk did I just inherit? And, most importantly, the whats-in-it-for-me:

• What does this say about my role, my team, or my relevance?

Here’s where seasoned leaders still fool themselves:
we assume acceptance of GBS change is rational.

It isn’t.
We are all human.

So instead of naming what’s really changing, we reassure. We soften. We explain until everyone nods politely—and then does exactly what they did before.

Enablement requires two things, at the same time:

• translating the change into their reality, not our slideware

• making a clear, explicit ask about what must now be done differently

If you can’t answer—plainly—

“What am I asking you to stop doing, start doing, or decide differently?”

you are not enabling change. You are merely narrating it.

2. Stop Treating Change Like a Temporary, Under-Resourced Project

This is where even very experienced GBS leaders reliably under-invest.

Change is still:

• funded through project scraps

• staffed with short-term contractors with their own methodologies

• wheeled in during crisis and rolled back out once things quiet down

The Everest Group-Sourcing Change research showed heavy reliance on contractor-led, episodic change models, with very little commitment to building institutional capability.

Translation for the enterprise:

This isn’t real. Just wait it out.

You cannot build trust, credibility, or muscle memory with rotating people who don’t know the stakeholders, the politics, or the scar tissue.

If change enablement actually matters, it has to be:

• continuously funded

• institutionally owned

• staffed by people who understand the business—not just the methodology

Otherwise, every “transformation” is just Groundhog Day with a new program name.

3. Leaders Must Change First—or Stop Acting Surprised

This is the non-negotiable everyone knows—and quietly ignores.

If leaders don’t change how they operate, no one else will.

CXOs and GBS leaders often sponsor change enthusiastically while continuing to:

• override new decision rights

• tolerate legacy behaviors

• reward old workarounds

And then they wonder why nothing sticks.

The organization is not confused.
It is extremely observant.

Real enablement requires leaders to:

• model new behaviors first

• absorb discomfort publicly

• hold peers accountable instead of tossing conflict over the wall to GBS

If leadership doesn’t change, everything else is performance art.

How to Measure Change Enablement (Precisely)

You’re wise to look beyond ‘traditional metrics.’ Adoption rates and training completion measure compliance.
They do not measure change.

If change is truly enabled, you should be able to observe it without a survey.

Look for these signals:

• Decision displacement
  Which decisions have actually moved out of legacy forums, inboxes, or shadow governance?

• Exception density
  Are there fewer carve-outs and workarounds—or just better excuses?

• Escalation quality (not volume)
  What no longer gets escalated—and what still does?

• Behavior under stress
  When pressure hits, do people revert—or hold the line?

• Ownership reflex
  Do people take accountability without asking permission?

• Time-to-yes / time-to-no
  Are decisions faster because roles and rights are clearer?

When change is well and truly enabled, you don’t have to ask whether it’s working.
The organization behaves differently.

People make decisions in the new way, not the old one.
They stop routing around the model.
They stop asking for exceptions that used to be automatic.
They stop waiting to see if this will blow over.

And if none of that is happening, the explanation is simple.

You didn’t ask people to change anything that mattered.
You didn’t put anyone on the hook.
You didn’t design the system to make the old behavior harder than the new one.

So don’t call it resistance.
Call it exactly what it is.

You explained the change.
You didn’t enable it.

Until next time,
Deborah