Leading People Through Change — Engagement Over Enforcement

Let me say the quiet part out loud.

Mandates don't work. Memos don't work. And sending another "reminder to complete your training" email definitely doesn't work.

I've never once seen a transformation succeed because people were told to get on board. The ones that actually work — long after the programme team have moved on — are built on something much harder to manufacture: trust.

Listen before you lead

In every transformation I've supported, the breakthrough moments have rarely come from a better project plan or a slicker communications pack. They've come from a conversation.

A team leader saying "no one actually explained why we're changing this." A frontline worker pointing out that the new process doesn't account for how they handle exceptions. A champion admitting the training was useful but didn't reflect how they really work.

When people feel heard, they engage. And they're involved in shaping change, they own it.

That's why, when we work with organisations to introduce Verto, we don't just configure and deploy. We co-design. We sit with teams, understand their workflows, and build reports and dashboards together. That shift, from doing change to people, to doing it with them, makes an enormous difference.

Resistance is a message

When someone pushes back on a change, the instinct for many leaders is to view it as a problem to manage. I'd encourage you to see it differently.

Resistance is feedback. It's almost always telling you something real: people are worried about losing control, they don't understand the benefits, or they don't yet believe that the change will actually make things easier.

Those are solvable problems, if you're willing to listen. The teams that treat resistance as information rather than insubordination are the ones that come out the other side with genuine buy-in.

Engagement pays off

I know investing time in engagement can feel like a luxury, particularly in the public sector, where teams are already stretched and the pressure to deliver is constant. But the evidence is clear, and I've seen it firsthand: organisations that invest in genuine engagement early almost always see faster adoption, higher satisfaction, and fewer costly headaches later.

With Verto, the clearest difference between implementations that fly and ones that struggle is almost never about the technology. It's about how much effort went into bringing people with you from day one.

In the next post, I'll take a step back and look at why change is uniquely complex in the public sector and why that complexity makes getting it right more important than ever.

 

Webinar: Leading through change. Why people resist, and what helps.

Change management is often talked about as a process, framework, or methodology, but in reality, it’s about people.

In this session, Natasha Osborne and Claire O'Dwyer explored the fundamentals of change management. Join us to unpick why some people resist change and how to help them through, often inevitable, organisational shifts.

Watch on-demand