Change programmes fail early because they are designed against a picture of the company built from leadership’s view, a few dozen interviews and last year’s survey. When the programme meets the real company, the gap shows up as “resistance”. Hearing everyone before the design starts closes that gap.
The assumption problem
Every programme begins with a picture of the company: how work flows, what people believe, where the problems live. That picture is assembled from leadership’s view, a few dozen interviews and last year’s survey. At best, it is a sketch. The programme is then built on the sketch.
When the programme meets the real company, the difference surfaces as resistance to change, adoption issues or unforeseen complexity. Very little of it was unforeseeable. It was simply never looked at.
Thirty interviews is not knowing your company
The traditional diagnostic phase interviews thirty to forty people, because interviews are slow and expensive. Thirty conversations in a company of five thousand is well under one percent, weighted toward the people comfortable talking to consultants. It is a satellite photo of a city when what you need is a street map.
“A satellite photo of a city, when what you need is a street map.”
What changes when you can hear everyone
AI interviewing removes the constraint that created the sampling problem. When a conversation costs almost nothing, you no longer sample. You ask everyone what they do, what they believe and where it breaks, and you design the programme against the company that exists, not the one on the slide.
The programmes that survive contact with reality are the ones that met reality first.
Questions
When should we listen: before or during the programme?
Before the design is fixed, then again once it is under way. The second reading shows what actually moved.
Who should we hear?
Everyone the change touches, at every level, in their own language. The floor usually holds the answer the programme needs most.
Nour, our guide, will suggest the right study and show you what it would find. Five minutes, any hour.
Talk to Nour