Look at what happens during the shift
I started my career in operations. In that environment, the gap between the procedure and what the system rewards can have real consequences. People notice very quickly which message is the official one and which behaviour helps them survive the shift.
Corporate work is less visually dramatic, but the same thing happens. We ask leaders to coach, then fill every hour with meetings. We tell people to experiment, then punish a missed deadline. We launch a new process while senior people keep requesting the old spreadsheet.
Check whether people can use what they’ve learned
A person can understand the new behaviour and still decide it’s not safe, sensible or worth the effort. That decision may be completely rational in the environment around them.
A new tool may add three approval steps. A manager may take over every attempt instead of helping someone learn. Or people may be asked to collaborate while promotions reward individual results. Those are reasons to look at the conditions around the person.
Before assuming resistance, look for the signal people are responding to.
Watch what the organisation spends
Look at the budget, the measures on the dashboard and the people who get promoted. They tell people which priorities they’re expected to act on.
An organisation can say frontline capability matters while funding another executive program and giving supervisors a SharePoint link. It can say safe AI matters while celebrating speed without asking how the result was checked.
Diagnose the environment before adding content
Map the behaviour you want, then ask what currently makes that behaviour easy, hard, rewarding or risky. Talk to the people doing the work and the managers translating priorities every day.
Look at the tools, hand-offs, workload, measures, access, policy and examples set by leaders. A course may still be part of the answer. It will be a much better course because it’s designed for the actual conditions.
- Do people have the time and tools to perform the behaviour?
- Does the manager notice, model and reinforce it?
- Do measures and incentives reward it or compete with it?
- Are policies and approval paths consistent with it?
- What happens to the first person who tries?
Change the work and the support together
Sometimes people need a simpler process, someone clearly responsible for a decision, regular support from their manager or a reminder at the point where they do the task.
Build practice and feedback around that change, so people can try the new approach with the time, tools and support they need.
Measure the behaviour where it happens
Don’t stop at whether people understood the message. Look for the behaviour in the workflow and the conditions around it.
Are managers making space? Are the tools being used? Did the hand-off improve? Is quality holding? Which teams changed and what is different in their environment?
Compare teams where the behaviour changed with teams where it didn’t. Look at the differences in time, tools and manager support before deciding to run the course again.