You’ve done your stakeholder analysis, mapped your impacts, and built your comms plan. And the people on the receiving end? They’re already dealing with four other changes, a restructure, and a new system they didn’t ask for. Your change isn’t landing because it’s competing with everything else. And no amount of ADKAR steps or engagement toolkits will fix that.
The rate of change happening to people right now is phenomenal. And it’s not slowing down.
We’ve been saying “change is constant” for a decade. Death, taxes, and change. We know this, but knowing it and actually helping people navigate it are two very different things. The answer isn’t better change management. It’s managing the portfolio of change people are actually living through.
The folly of “managed” change
Early in my career, I genuinely believed that if we followed the right steps, a change would land well and people would be happy. Fifteen years later, I’ve let go of that.
My job as a change practitioner isn’t to make people happy. I can’t control how someone feels, and setting that as the bar is a fast track to failure. There is so much happening in a person’s life that shapes how they experience change at work. What I can do is make sure the true intent behind the change actually lands. That people are coping and that they’re set up for success. Those things are within our control and they should remain top of mind.
It’s also where traditional change management starts to fall short. Frameworks like ADKAR (as they have historically been taught) are designed to manage a single change in a controlled environment. They assume you have people’s attention and that the change you’re working on is the main event. When in reality, for most people, it isn’t, it’s one of many. And when every change comes with its own impact assessment, its own comms plan, its own survey, it starts to feel like the process itself is part of the problem. More templates don’t reduce the load; they add to it and, with it, to the fatigue and noise. We’ve turned change management into a compliance exercise and then wondered why people feel managed, not supported. And if compliance is the goal, we already have what’s left of the project management profession for that.
What does it look like to actually account for the load?
This is where change portfolio management comes in. Just as portfolio management transformed how we think about projects (not in isolation, but as a system of interdependent investments), change portfolio management does the same for change.
Change doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It happens within a system. And as soon as one change lands in a system, the system moves. One trigger sets off a chain. A merger has legal deadlines that can’t shift. Those deadlines force infrastructure changes. Infrastructure changes mean new locations. New locations need new ICT. New ICT needs a new data approach. And suddenly, from the perspective of the person sitting in the middle of it all, everything is changing at once.
Take a step back to the enterprise level, and it makes sense. One thing triggers a cascade. But that logic isn’t always visible to the people living through it. And it doesn’t automatically mean the sequencing is right, or the load is manageable.
A portfolio view forces you to ask different questions. Not just “how do we land this change?” but “what else is this person dealing with right now, and is the load proportional?” It helps you see where to sequence, where to pause, and where the real risk to people sits. Not every change needs the same airtime. A minor intranet update doesn’t need the same treatment as a structural reform.
And this is why “communication” keeps coming up as the problem, even though it usually isn’t. When people say they don’t understand what’s happening, it’s rarely because you haven’t sent enough emails. It’s because the communication they’re receiving isn’t proportional to what actually matters to them. They’re getting five updates about a system migration that barely touches their role and hearing nothing about the restructure that changes who they report to. Or they’re getting so much change noise across so many initiatives that everything blurs into the background. That’s not a comms failure. That’s a portfolio problem. Without a view across the organisation, every change is communicated as if it’s the priority. And for the human at the end of the line, it feels like drinking from a fire hose.
Practical things that can help
Having visibility of change across the organisation is one thing, but what can you do with this knowledge? Here are a few helpful tips to think about:
Proportional communications. Take an honest look at the impact of the change activities you’re undertaking. Do the large majority of stakeholders actually need to know about it? This will depend on many factors, and culture does play a large part. Knowing who is affected and how will help you set the level of your communication.
Centralised change communications. There are different ways to communicate, and not every change deserves an email. Having a central spot where people can proactively see what’s coming down the pipe might be an effective way to balance informing people without overwhelming people.
Be as honest as practicable about the change and the why of the change. There’s always a cost. Opportunity cost. Financial cost. And then there’s the cost the organisation bears through its people, their energy, their trust, their culture. If your culture is already stretched, the cost of one more poorly sequenced change is high. Even if it looks small on paper. Building the opportunity for genuine human connection will help people understand and come to terms with what this means for them.
There’s no perfect formula. No single right answer. But being honest, with yourself and with the people around you, about why things are changing and what’s really driving the timing? That gets you further than another change impact assessment ever will.
Change portfolio management isn’t just a planning tool. It’s a way of being truthful about the load, the logic, and the human cost of doing everything at once.