I’ve learned to pay attention to what happens after everyone agrees that the plan is solid.
I don’t need to see the project plan to know how this story goes.
The strategy has been approved and the budget locked.
The tool has been selected; the timeline looks aggressive, but somehow still optimistic.
Everyone exhales.
And then someone asks it. Politely, optimistically, and a little too late:
“Do we need change management for this?”
Not as a real question about people but more like a procedural one.
A box to check, something to layer on once the important decisions are already behind us.
An afterthought.
When everything is “ready” except the people.
I remember when Microsoft Teams was released.
The excitement was real. The licenses were bought. The rollout decks were ready. Somewhere, someone confidently said, “This will finally fix how we collaborate.”
And technically? It worked.
But walk through most organizations a few months later and you’d still see files emailed back and forth, conversations duplicated across channels, and people quietly doing what they’d always done, just with a new icon on their desktop.
Teams wasn’t the problem. The assumption was.
The assumption that intuitive tools don’t require intentional change.
That people will naturally adapt if the technology is “good enough.”
That once something is announced, it’s understood.
The system was ready on day one.
The humans were still trying to figure out what just happened.
Why Change Management always shows up late to the party.
Change management has a branding problem.
It’s often mistaken for communication.
Or training.
Or a handful of emails and a deck that lives somewhere on SharePoint.
Something you add once the real work is done. Like a garnish. Or a footer. Or that last slide everyone skips.
But the real work is the change.
When organizations treat change management as a task instead of a discipline, they miss its actual purpose: helping people move from what they know into what they’re being asked to do next, without losing confidence, clarity, or trust along the way.
That transition isn’t procedural. It’s emotional.
And emotions, inconveniently, don’t follow project plans. (Shocking, I know.)
The quiet cost of the afterthought.
When change management is added late, a few predictable things start to happen.
Leaders assume clarity because they understand the decision.
Confusion gets labeled as resistance.
Silence gets mistaken for alignment.
And the organization is the one that pays. Quietly.
In rework that no one budgets for. In shadow processes that slowly multiply.
In fatigue, that doesn’t show up on a dashboard. In disengagement, that’s felt long before it’s measured.
None of this looks dramatic in a status meeting. But everyone feels it in the work.
What changes when Change Management comes first.
When change management is part of the strategy, not something bolted on at the end, the tone shifts early.
Decisions are shaped with people in mind, not retrofitted later.
Timing reflects reality instead of wishful thinking.
Leaders start asking better questions while the answers can still influence the outcome.
Questions like:
- What habits are we asking people to unlearn?
- Where will this feel uncomfortable, not just inefficient?
- Who might feel exposed or left behind?
- What support will actually matter here, not just look good on a slide?
These questions don’t slow progress; they actually prevent the kind of friction that quietly derails it later.
A better way to think about it:
Change management isn’t the polish at the end.
It’s the connective tissue throughout.
It’s how strategy turns into behavior. How tools become habits.
How decisions become lived experience instead of theoretical alignment.
When it’s treated as an afterthought, it shows.
When it’s treated as a discipline, it shows even more.
What actually helps (so this doesn’t become the afterthought again):
What I’ve seen work isn’t complicated, but it is intentional.
Start thinking about people earlier than it feels necessary. If you wait until the solution is finalized to ask how it will land, you’re already late. The moment a decision starts to solidify is the moment to test how it will actually feel to live with it.
Translate before you broadcast. Announcing a change isn’t the same as helping people understand it. Before anything goes wide, ask a few real humans what’s confusing or uncomfortable. The answers are usually obvious in hindsight, and invaluable.
Pay attention to silence. When no one has questions, don’t assume alignment. Assume hesitation. Silence is often the first sign that people aren’t sure it’s safe to speak yet.
And treat adoption as real work, not compliance. If success depends on new habits, then supporting those habits is the job. Time, reinforcement, and follow-up aren’t extras — they’re the mechanism.
None of this is hard.
But it does require care.
And that’s exactly what gets lost when change management is treated as an afterthought.
The shift:
The shift isn’t from no change management to more change management.
It’s from seeing it as a checkbox to recognizing it as the work that makes everything else work.
Because the success of a strategy it’s decided in how people experience the change. On a Tuesday afternoon, between meetings, when something doesn’t work the way they expected.
That part should never be an afterthought.
About The Shift Series
Shift Happens is a series exploring how organizations can turn disruption into direction. We write about the real, human side of work, where change, technology, behavior, and leadership collide in ways no framework fully captures.
Every article follows one of the five currents that shape modern work:
The Human Side of Transformation, the heartbeat beneath the strategy.
Change Management as the Missing Discipline, the discipline hiding in plain sight, quietly determining who succeeds.
Technology, Tools + Human Behavior, the space where logic meets instinct, and where most rollouts live or die.
Organizational Structure, Power & Governance, the lines, ladders, and tensions that decide how work truly flows.
Leadership Micro, Shifts, Governance & Operating Models, the small shifts that create disproportionate impact.
We combine lived experience with practical insight. The kind you can apply the same day, not someday.
Shift happens! But with the right mindset, it happens through you.
If your organization is navigating a shift in technology, structure, or culture and needs practical, human, centered support, reach out.
This is the work we love! And the work we do best.
