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The Sin of Survey-Washing

The Sin of Survey-Washing

25-03-07 | Change Confessions, Sins of Change

Ah, the employee survey; a classic move in the corporate playbook. It’s the Swiss Army knife of workplace engagement: quick, convenient, and, if used correctly, genuinely useful. But let’s be honest, too often, it’s wielded like a magic wand meant to look like action rather than drive real change.

Here’s the usual routine: A big change is announced, employees feel blind-sided, and the project team senses the growing tension. What’s the go-to solution? A survey! A neat, data-driven exercise that provides the comforting illusion of listening.

But here’s the catch: These surveys often serve as a public relations exercise rather than a real feedback mechanism. The questions, while well-meaning, tend to guide responses in a way that serves to reinforce the existing plan rather than challenge it.

Some classics include:

  • Do you understand why this change is happening? (Translation: We hope so, because it’s happening anyway.)
  • How confident are you in management’s ability to drive this change? (Translation: Here’s your moment to be supportive!)
  • What additional support do you need? (Translation: We’ll add that to the roadmap, but no promises.)

Then comes the grand finale: The results are selectively highlighted, a celebratory email goes out about “valuable insights,” and everything continues as planned. Employees, meanwhile, recognize the performance for what it is—a well-intentioned but ultimately hollow gesture if nothing tangible follows.

Survey-washing isn’t just a change-management issue; HR and comms teams also love a good data-backed initiative to win over stakeholders. And hey, surveys can be great tools! The problem isn’t the survey itself—it’s when they’re used to check a box instead of shape the path forward.

If you’re going to ask for feedback, be ready to act on it. Otherwise, it’s just another corporate tradition that everyone sees through but no one calls out.

Welcome to the Friday Confessional. If you know, you know.

Bad Change Habits: The Band-Aid Over Bullet Wounds Habit

Bad Change Habits: The Band-Aid Over Bullet Wounds Habit

25-02-28 | Bad Change Habits, Change Confessions

Big problems usually demand big solutions, but in corporate change management, they often get quick, cosmetic fixes instead:

💥 Massive restructuring failure? Let’s just move the boxes on the org chart again and call it transformation.

💥 Widespread process breakdown? A new workflow tool will magically fix that (even if no one changes their behavior).

💥 Employee burnout from relentless, chaotic change? Throw in a wellness webinar and call it support.

This is the Band-Aid Over a Bullet Wound habit, where leaders ignore the root cause of change failures and instead roll out shiny, surface-level solutions that only frustrate the organization even more:

  • A new tool won’t fix broken processes. Automating inefficiency just makes you inefficient faster.
  • A reorg won’t fix leadership dysfunction. Moving the same ineffective leaders into different seats doesn’t change the fact that they’re still ineffective.
  • Another engagement survey won’t solve change fatigue. If employees are exhausted, maybe stop overloading them with constant, disconnected change initiatives instead of asking them how they feel about it.

These quick fixes look like action, but they’re just corporate theater, often led by HR and Comms, who should also be feeling the burn right now. Such performative gestures are designed to create the illusion of progress, yet they avoid the real, systemic work of change.

And when everything inevitably falls apart again? Guess what? Here comes the next Band-Aid.

Doing the hard work of real change would require leadership to acknowledge their role in the mess, and unfortunately, that’s often too much truth for most organizations to handle.

Welcome to the Friday Confessional. If you know, you know.

The Sin of Leadership Gaslighting

The Sin of Leadership Gaslighting

25-02-21 | Change Confessions, Change Leadership, Sins of Change

“We had a massive problem with resistance.”

That’s often the conclusion when a transformation effort crashes and burns. It couldn’t possibly have been the terrible strategy, the lack of communication, or the fact that the CEO and CFO nearly got into a wrestling match in the boardroom. Oh no!

The problem must have been the middle managers who didn’t do their job or the employees who just “don’t get it.”

This is not a psychology lesson, but still: welcome to Leadership Gaslighting 101 where the red flags line up as…

🚩 Employees pointing out real problems.

🚩 Leadership dismissing them as “negativity” or “resistance.”

🚩 The initiative stalling and ultimately failing.

🚩 Leadership blaming employees for “not embracing the vision.”

Listen up, leaders, change managers, project leads and HR business partners: It’s not the change itself that people resist. It’s the BS with which it is often served: unrealistic timelines, indifference of existing workloads, ignorance of processes on the ground, disregard of the wisdom of the people actually doing the work.

People typically respond with resistance when:

  • Change has no clear rationale – Instead, the purpose and expected benefits of the change should be crystal clear, because “Leadership said so” isn’t a valid strategy. 
  • Change makes things worse – If the new system is slower, clunkier, and creates more work, don’t expect applause.
  • Change has no management buy-in – If managers don’t support the change, why should anyone else?
  • Change ignores past failures – Chasing the same old concept through the organization under a new name just treats employees like fools. They’ve been there and have the t-shirts.

If people are “resisting,” maybe they’re not the problem. Maybe the change itself is broken. Admitting that would mean taking accountability. But why do that, when you can just blame the organization?

Welcome to The Friday Confessional. If you know, you know.

The Never-Ending Approval Process: A Corporate Nightmare

The Never-Ending Approval Process: A Corporate Nightmare

25-02-14 | Bad Change Habits, Change Confessions

It starts with a simple proposal.

A small, logical tweak to improve efficiency. Nothing controversial, nothing complicated, just the kind of thing that should take two weeks to implement.

And then, the telenovela begins.

Jamie is on holiday. We could proceed without her, but Jamie is very important (we think?), so we wait. Two weeks pass.

In the meantime, someone suggests we hold off until HR launches their new performance management system. Makes sense. No one is exactly sure when that’s happening, but…okay.

Then there’s Bob. Poor old Bob will hate this. If we invite him to the meeting, we’ll be here all year. Maybe we just… don’t?

And then Jamie returns: tanned, well-rested, and…she has some thoughts. Not about the proposal, mind you. Apparently the book she’s been reading while on vacation has blown her mind. She’s now full of ideas about how the company’s leadership culture should be radically transformed. She lays the book on the conference table, opens it at one of the many sticky bookmarks and starts reading out one of her highlighted quotes.

And just like that, the project is no longer about a simple process change. It’s about rethinking the way we work. It needs a new framework, new messaging, a new sponsor, and of course, a vision statement and possibly its own branding and intranet site.

A new round of meetings is scheduled. A new slide deck is in the works. The original problem? No one remembers. But Jamie’s book? Internal comms is already managing the order for the entire company.

And just like that, the project doesn’t get approved. It gets reimagined.

Simple changes don’t fail because they’re hard. They fail because over-enthusiastic executives turn them into grand reinventions of the wheel, chasing trends and building legacies for their own future instead of solving the problems that are costing us customers today.

Welcome to The Friday Confessional. If you know, you know.

Bad Change Habits: Ghosting the Organization

Bad Change Habits: Ghosting the Organization

25-01-24 | Bad Change Habits, Change Confessions

What a spectacular launch!

A big kickoff event. A fancy new logo. A well-produced leadership video about “embracing transformation.” A dedicated Slack channel, briefly buzzing with excitement.

And then… silence.

No follow-ups. No updates. No sign that anyone outside the project team still remembers this initiative exists.

But inside the project team? Oh, they’re super-busy with endless working sessions, steering committee discussions,  and status reports that are circulated at the highest levels but never shared with the people who actually have to live with the change.

Meanwhile, the organization assumes nothing is happening. Employees move on. New priorities emerge. The Slack channel fades into irrelevance, now occupied by the occasional bot notification and someone accidentally posting in the wrong thread.

Then, months later, the project team comes bursting back onto the scene with a new announcement: “Exciting Updates on Our Change Initiative!”

The reaction?
“Wait… that’s still a thing?”

It’s like a long-lost ex suddenly texting, “Hey, what’s up?” after months of radio silence. Except this time, they want you to change the way you do your job.

Re-engaging an organization after ghosting them is twice as hard as keeping them engaged in the first place. Now, there’s skepticism. Exhaustion. A sense that this is just another project that will fizzle out.

Change doesn’t fail because people resist it. It fails because they forgot why they were supposed to care in the first place.

Welcome to The Friday Confessional. If you know, you know.

Change Speak: “Our Efficiency Strategy”

Change Speak: “Our Efficiency Strategy”

25-01-17 | Change Confessions, Change-Speak

Aaah, the optimism. The grand vision. The leadership roadshow complete with slick PowerPoints and just enough buzzwords to make it sound like this time, things will be different. But haven’t we heard it all before?

“We’re transforming the way we work!”

“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity!”

“Things can only get better!”

Can they, though?

Because once the buzz dies down and the executive Q&A wraps up, reality sets in: No owner. No roadmap. No actual plan. Just a lot of blind faith and a vague hope that “momentum” will somehow carry this thing forward.

Six months later… tumbleweed:

🔹 Some teams have made an educated guess and started changing things. What exactly is not entirely clear.

🔹 Others assume the initiative was quietly abandoned like last year’s new individual performance plan (thank goodness!).

🔹 A department in Singapore is still waiting on a follow-up email that never came.

Then one brave soul dares to ask:
“Hey… are we still doing that thing?”

Cue the awkward shuffling. The tight smile. The vague reference to ‘shifting priorities.’
And just like that, the change initiative vanishes into the black hole of good intentions.

The next Big Idea is already in the pipeline.

And the teams left behind? Still confused. Still waiting. Still shaking their heads.

Welcome to The Friday Confessional. If you know, you know.