Listening to your feedback from my training courses and master classes, I have identified 5 common change management challenges dominating our work through 2025.
This is backed up by the data from the Change Capability Survey run by Capability for Change Limited. The results of this survey can be found here.
Below, I have summarised the 5 most common change management challenges and where they have come from.
Here are the top 5 common change management challenges.
No one experiences changes as individual, independent events anymore. There are far too many changes taking place across our organisations to allow that to happen.
We could be in the middle of adapting to new ways of working when yet another change is announced.
It is so easy to lose concentration, to forget where we have got to and feel like we are making no progress at all.
The dependencies between various changes can create so many side effects that we stand on the sidelines and wait hopefully for a perfect moment of clarity before we get involved – but this moment never comes!
I hate the “side of the desk” phrase, this idea that along with our main job, we have to turn to the side and give a new way of working a little piece of our energy and attention, and then get back to the main part of our role.
With so much change happening, this is no longer sustainable. We are reaching a tipping point where before we can commission any further changes, we have to work out where people will find the time to take part.
One of the most popular sessions in my Senior Leaders master class is the one where they are challenged to kill off other work before they can authorise a change. We have great fun trying to find things they want to stop because if they only ever start things, we end up with an overwhelming breadth of additional responsibilities.
It isn’t just the volume of communications; they also need to be more compelling. Why? Well, most people have just a few seconds to skim an email before moving on. If you want to get more information across, give people a video to watch so they can have that playing whilst they are doing other things.
Give them a short clip, which tells them 3-5 key pieces of information within 2 minutes – if they connect with what you are saying, they will ask for more information.
Don’t start from the position that they need to know everything all at the same time; you will overwhelm them, and they will ignore you.
Iterative, incremental planning (as taught in the Agile Change Agent course) is the best way to address uncertainty. Why plan everything in detail upfront if you don’t know the details – madness. Instead, be ready to re-plan, re-estimate and flex your approach as circumstances change. After all, who could have predicted a global trade war only a few months ago, but now we are all adjusting to a business world full of tariffs?
Restructuring has taken over from digital transformation as the change most likely to get you all nodding in agreement. This is a shift from last year when digital was the keyword. I am not saying digital transformations don’t take place – but they are in response to an efficiency and cost-cutting agenda, which is driving the restructurings.
These 5 challenges tell us things are changing fast. We need to react more quickly than ever before, we need to understand how people feel about change and be able to step in with support and coping mechanisms early and frequently.
This is where the study of Neuroscience can help – you can build your strategy for a world of constant, high-volume change using neuroscience.
After all, change is always a threat before it is an opportunity, and the Neuroscience for Change course teaches you how to shift the emotions triggered by change from negative to positive.
Neuroscience is the most in-demand skill I am asked for across all my training work, so I am committed to offering an open session every couple of months so that you don’t have to wait for your organisation to commission a training course. Contact me for more information or to book your place today.
