Utilizing Project Management Frameworks

“That’s how it’s always been done.” “This won’t work in our industry.” “You’re too new to get it.” If I had a penny for every time I heard these lines when proposing a change—I’d probably be running a unicorn startup by now. 😅 I still remember one of my first experiences in a new role. I suggested revisiting a job description—not to overhaul it, but simply to remove ambiguities, overlaps, and duplication of work that had crept in over time. The reaction? “This JD has worked for years. No one’s complained so far.” There it was: the resistance wall. Over the years, I’ve seen this play out across functions and industries: 🔹 A new joiner suggests digitizing a manual report—gets told, “This Excel sheet has worked for us for 10 years.” 🔹 A manager proposes flexible shift timings—hears, “Our clients expect us to be online 9 to 6.” 🔹 A team member raises a safety concern about slippery delivery ramps in monsoon and recommends anti-skid mats—gets dismissed: “We’ve never had an accident. Just be cautious.” 🔹 A process engineer suggests eliminating a redundant approval step to speed things up—only to be told, “That’s how our hierarchy works. Don’t skip protocol.” What’s really going on here? ➡️ Change triggers fear—of disruption, of being proven wrong, of additional effort. ➡️ Defensiveness kicks in—especially when the idea comes from someone “new” or “junior.” ➡️ And improvement turns into a power struggle, instead of a shared goal. But here’s what experience teaches you: 💡 Resistance doesn’t always mean rejection. It often means someone feels unsure, unprepared, or undervalued. So how do we move from resistance to reflection? ✅ Start with what’s working—and build from there. ✅ Ask instead of assert—“What if we tried this for a week?” ✅ Show vs sell—pilot it, demonstrate the impact. ✅ Involve, don’t impose—people support what they help create. ✅ Leaders: protect and back your changemakers—especially the quiet, persistent ones. 🌱 Most change doesn’t need a revolution. Sometimes, it just needs someone to ask: “Would you be open to a better way?” ⸻ What’s a change you tried suggesting that hit resistance? Did you push through—or pivot? Let’s talk about it 👇 #ChangeManagement #LeadershipInAction #WorkplaceCulture #OrganizationalChange #HRStories #VoiceAtWork #ContinuousImprovement #RealWorkplaceTalk #BreakingBarriers #ModernWorkplace #PsychologicalSafety P.S my own change met with resistance and then just becoming the norm.

I've seen PMOs designed in a way where teams & stakeholders ignore them. Not because the frameworks were bad. Because no one had involved them in building it. The typical approach: Build the framework. Roll it out. Then figure out how to get people to use it. Perfect PMO processes get created this way all the time. Beautiful templates. Clear governance. Everything documented. Then teams ignore them. The problem isn't that people resist change. It's that adoption gets treated like an afterthought. Most PMO teams spend 90% of their time designing the process. Then scramble to "sell" it to teams in the final 10%. By then, it's too late. Here's what actually works: Adoption isn't what happens after you build something. It's what you design for from the beginning. The most effective PMOs flip the entire approach: Start with the people who'll use it. Instead of asking questions and then disappearing to build, bring them into the design room. Build together from day one: ↳ They show you their current workflow, messy parts and all ↳ You bring lightweight structure options, not finished templates ↳ You prototype together, test with their real work, iterate fast The key shift? They're not giving feedback on what you built. They're co-creating what you're building. Not a comprehensive framework. Not a polished playbook. Just the minimum viable structure that solves their actual problem. The result? Frameworks that don't need training sessions to explain. Tools that people ask for instead of avoid. Processes that feel helpful, not bureaucratic. PMOs don't fail because people won't adopt them. They fail because they weren't designed to be adoptable. Want a PMO that actually gets used? Stop building first and hoping for adoption. Start designing for adoption from day one.

Most companies think stakeholder management is about getting buy-in. It's actually about changing predictions.   Years ago, I was helping a technology company with their organizational transformation. They had grown from a startup to several thousand people but were still operating like a startup. No real processes. No decision-making structures. Just running from one urgent need to another.   When I recommended new forms of governance, the resistance was immediate. And here's what made it complicated: each senior leader was resisting against a different, negative outcome as a result of the change.   For example, some believed that structure would slow them down and make them less nimble versus competitors. Others thought it would kill innovation. Some thought it would create bureaucracy by adding layers and layers of approvals to workflows. Many thought it meant they would lose the autonomy to run their business unit.   Here's what was really happening. Each person's brain was making different predictions based on their unique experience. These leaders could only predict problems because unstructured processes and systems were all they'd ever known. Their brains couldn't envision the benefits because they had no (or at least limited) experience with good structure.   Traditional stakeholder management would have grouped them as "senior leaders" and design one strategy for them all. But their concerns were entirely individual.   Changing predictions requires three things. First, understanding that each person's concerns are unique. No two brains make the same predictions. Second, getting people to try new approaches without perfect information. This takes direct, one-on-one conversations. Third, recognizing that predictions don't change overnight. It takes experience and repetition.   If the stakeholders in your company are resisting change understand that their brains are doing what brains do. They're predicting outcomes based on what they know.   The next time you build your stakeholder management approach remember it's not about treating everyone with the same title the same.   It's about engaging everyone, individually, where they are. Michael J Lopez Consulting #change #stakeholdermanagement

She had the perfect plan. A textbook framework. Step-by-step precision. Every milestone mapped, every task assigned. And yet— Six months in, the project was struggling. Why? Because real-life change isn’t textbook. One-size-fits-all frameworks don’t account for: – A team’s unique culture. – A leader’s capacity to engage. – The messy, unpredictable reality of business. I’ll never forget what turned it around: We stopped trying to make the team fit the model. And started making the model fit the team. We took a little from **Kotter’s 8 Steps**: Build urgency, form a guiding coalition. A dash of **ADKAR**: Focus on what each person needs to move forward. And sprinkled in a healthy dose of **Lean principles**: Iterate, test, learn. Suddenly, the energy shifted: – Resistance turned into problem solving. – Complexity felt manageable. – The team took ownership of the change. Here’s the lesson: No single model will save your project. But the right combination can transform it. So, before you blindly follow the book: ↳ Start with your business. What’s the culture? The challenges? The capacity? ↳ Mix and match. Pull the pieces that resonate. Leave the rest behind. ↳ Adapt as you go. Your framework should serve the team—not the other way around. Because the most successful change efforts don’t follow one path. They create their own.

I think we use the word resistance too quickly in change work... When people don't adopt a new process or the new way of working, it is very easy to say they are resisting the change, however, a lot of the time the old behavior is still easier, safer, more familiar, and/or more rewarded than the new one. Which means that calling it resistance doesn't really help you much.. that is why I think one of the most useful things you can do in any behavior change initiative is to stop for a moment and compare the old behaviour with the new one. For example, instead of saying we need people to adopt the new CRM, get more specific and say sales managers need to run their weekly pipeline reviews using the CRM data views instead of asking each person to send a separate spreadsheet update. Those small changes matter because now you can actually design for it, and make sure you eliminate all the things that made the spreadsheets or whatever it is they are using harder and the new way easier and more rewarding. Here is a simple way to look at it (using my AfB Shift Method) 1) Specify what people actually need to do 2) Hypothesise what is getting in the way 3)Intervene against the real friction 4)Facilitate the conditions around the behaviour 5)Test whether it is actually changing in practice My tip: Choose one behaviour in a change initiative you are working on and write the old behaviour people are going back to next to the new behaviour you want them to do. Then compare them honestly: -Which one is easier in the real workflow? -Which one is faster under pressure? -Which one is safer socially? -Which one is more rewarded? -Which one do leaders actually reinforce Those answers already give you a much better starting point and can be the difference between going from a change plan to actually designing for behaviour change.

The hardest place to do Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) work is not a complex programme. It's in an organisation where nobody really values M&E. You can have the best framework. The clearest indicators. The most rigorous theory of change. None of that will work. The practitioners who get things working aren't the ones who know the most theory. They're the ones who know how to meet people where they are. Nobody teaches this. Not in training courses. Not in textbooks. So here are a few practical things I have learned for the MEL professional fighting this battle: ↳ Stop leading with MEL terminology. If people do not know what a Theory of Change is, start with their strategy. Every organisation has a document with their vision. Use that. ↳ Translate MEL into problems people already care about. Most colleagues are not thinking: “We need stronger learning systems.” They are thinking: “Why are we constantly firefighting?” or “Why are donors unhappy with our reporting?” Start there. ↳ Don’t try to overhaul the system immediately. Find one small win. One useful indicator. One report somebody actually reads. Small wins create credibility. ↳ Avoid making people feel stupid. One of the fastest ways to create resistance is to make colleagues feel like they are being lectured or corrected. ↳ Celebrate visible wins loudly. Culture shifts when people begin associating MEL with practical improvement instead of additional reporting. Have you experienced indifference or resistance to MEL in your work? If yes, how do you deal with this? Let me hear in the Comments Section below. 👇 #MEL

I was hired to “fix resistance.” That was the actual language in the brief. New systems. New workflows. New expectations. Leadership wanted people “on board.” My role? Help them stop pushing back. At first, we treated resistance like a problem to be solved: Town halls. FAQs. Training sessions. Carefully crafted messages. And yes, we heard all the familiar lines: “Here we go again.” “This won’t last.” “You’re asking us to do more with less… again.” “You say ‘empowerment,’ but it feels like control.” The instinct was to label it: resistant, negative, change-averse. But the same people pushing back were also: The ones who stayed late when things went wrong. The ones others turned to when they needed help. The ones quietly holding the organization together on its hardest days. That mismatch bothered me. That was the pivot point. We stopped asking, “How do we reduce resistance?” We started asking, “What are people trying to protect when they resist?” When we listened through that lens, resistance looked very different: Some were protecting quality from unrealistic timelines. Some were protecting trust from one more promise that wouldn’t be kept. Some were protecting dignity from being monitored instead of supported. Some were protecting capacity from initiatives that added workload but removed nothing. So we changed how we led the change: Invited the strongest critics in early as co-designers, not late as “barriers.” Made it explicit: every major change had to remove or simplify something, not just add. Built mechanisms to raise “red flags” when risks appeared without fear of being labeled difficult. Committed publicly to altering plans based on what we heard, not just “taking feedback onboard.” If you’re leading transformation right now, here’s the uncomfortable truth: What you call “resistance” is often free risk analysis. The people slowing you down are often preventing bigger failure. Every objection is data about the gap between your story and their reality. Before you design another tactic to “overcome resistance”: Invite your toughest critics into the room first, not last. Ask them: “What are you trying to protect when you push back on this?” Treat every objection as a signal, not a character flaw. Decide in advance which parts of your plan you’re willing to change based on what they tell you and say that out loud. If you treat resistance as the enemy, you’ll spend your energy fighting the very people who could make your change safer and smarter. If you treat it as intelligence, you’ll discover your fiercest challengers can become your most trusted allies. What’s one “resistant” voice in your world right now that might actually improve the way you’re leading change?

I used to think project management was about timelines and deliverables. Then I realized every project is actually a change project. And people hate change. Here's what separates good project managers from great ones: Great project managers know they're not just managing tasks. ♻️ Repost if you believe project management is really people management ➕ Follow Sarah Wilson for more insights on change and operations 💬 Comment with one fear your team has shared during a project transition They're managing transitions. They don't just roll out new processes. They help people let go of old ones first. They don't announce changes and expect adoption. They create space for resistance, questions, and fear. The framework that changed everything for me? Think of every project in three phases: 1. Endings (What are people losing? Acknowledge it. Even if it's a "bad" process, it was familiar.) 2. Neutral Zone (This messy middle is where resistance lives. Don't rush it. People need time to unlearn before they can relearn.) 3. New Beginning (Only now can you celebrate the "new way." But you can't skip to here.) Most projects fail because we ignore the human side. We focus on the technical rollout and wonder why nobody's using the new system. We blame "resistance to change" instead of recognizing we never helped people through it. You don't need a change management certification to do this well. You need empathy. You need to ask: "What's scary about this for my team?" Then address that fear directly, not with logic, but with support. The technical part of project management? That's the easy part. The hard part is helping people move from who they were to who they need to become. If you're managing any project right now, try this: Before your next update, ask your team what they're worried about losing. Then listen. Really listen. That conversation will tell you more about your project's success than any status report ever will.

"Resistance to change" is one of the most dangerous phrases in business. Not because it's wrong. Because it's lazy. When employees push back on a transformation, we reach for that phrase like a reflex. "They're resistant." "People fear change." "We need more communication to overcome resistance." Here's what's actually happening most of the time: employees are diagnosing problems that leadership hasn't seen yet. The team that won't adopt the new system? They've already figured out it doesn't match their actual workflow. The middle managers dragging their feet? They can see the contradiction between what you're saying and what you're measuring. The "resisters" on the front line? They're doing sophisticated analysis of whether this change will actually work, in real time, with better data than the executive team has. But orthodox change management doesn't have a category for that. It has "resistance" and "adoption curves" and tools for overcoming pushback. It has no tools for listening. So what happens? The diagnostic feedback gets pathologized. Employees who point out real problems get labeled resisters. Their concerns get addressed with more communication, which usually just means more repetition of the same message they already heard and found unconvincing. This creates a vicious cycle. Employees see their concerns aren't being heard. They conclude leadership isn't interested in reality, only in executing a predetermined plan. Trust erodes. People stop surfacing problems because it doesn't help and might hurt their career. The change proceeds with less intelligence than it started with. I watched this play out at a national healthcare network. Leadership rolled out a new digital intake system. Nurses pushed back. The executive sponsor called it "classic resistance" and ordered more training. One regional director quietly ran listening sessions instead. She asked staff to walk her through a typical day. What emerged wasn't fear of change. It was diagnosis. The system required triple data entry, broke integration with patient records, and delayed triage during peak hours. They paused the rollout. Embedded frontline staff in the redesign. Within three months, error rates dropped 40%. The so-called "resisters" saved the project. The shift from "overcoming resistance" to "harvesting intelligence" is one of the most powerful moves a leader can make. It changes who speaks up, what information surfaces, and how fast you can adapt when reality diverges from the plan. Most organizations never make that shift. They'd rather blame the humans than question the plan.

You bought the best practice management software on the market. Six months later, half your team still uses workarounds and spreadsheets. Sound familiar? Here's the uncomfortable truth: Software failure is rarely about the software. It's about change management. ➡️ THE REAL CHALLENGE ISN'T TECHNICAL. IT'S HUMAN. ⬅️ I've watched practices spend tens of thousands of dollars on software and $0 on helping their team adapt to it. Then they wonder why adoption fails. Here's what actually works: ‼️ BEFORE YOU SWITCH: ‼️ → Identify your champions (the team members who embrace change) → Let resisters voice concerns early (don't dismiss their fears) → Map workflow changes for every role (show, don't tell) → Set realistic expectations (it gets worse before it gets better) ✅ DURING IMPLEMENTATION: ✅ → Celebrate tiny wins publicly ("Sarah processed her first invoice in the new system!") → Create a "no stupid questions" safe space → Expect productivity to drop 30% in week one (budget for it) → Document workarounds that emerge (they're signals, not problems) 🚨 AFTER GO-LIVE: 🚨 → Schedule daily 15-minute huddles for the first 2 weeks → Track what's working AND what's frustrating → Adjust workflows based on real use (not how the vendor said it "should" work) → Acknowledge the emotional labor of change 🛑 THE RESISTANCE YOU'LL FACE: 🛑 "The old system worked fine" = I'm comfortable and this feels risky "This takes longer" = I'm slower while learning and that's embarrassing "Can't we just..." = I want my competence back These aren't barriers to overcome. They're emotions to acknowledge. 📢 HERE'S WHAT I TELL PRACTICES: 📢 Your best veterinarian spent years learning surgery. You didn't expect them to be great in month one. Why do we expect staff to master new software in a week? Give your team: → Permission to struggle → Time to learn → Space to be frustrated → Support to succeed The software is the easy part. Leading people through change? That's the real work. How did you handle change management in your practice? #VeterinaryPractice #ChangeManagement #PracticeManagement #VetMed #Leadership #VeterinarySoftware #TeamDevelopment