Your people found workarounds and you’re unaware.
Your people stopped talking in meetings. They just stare at their phones + note pads.
Your manager has stopped pushing the new process because this latest change is low priority.
Your team completed the training but then
went back to the old way of working.
These aren’t just “people issues.” They’re data.
The question is, are you measuring them before they become business results?
Emotions aren’t the opposite of business data. They are business data.
Frustration shows up in workarounds
Fear shows up in resistance
Distrust shows up in silence
Disengagement shows up in productivity
Emotions are operational data.
You just have to know how to read them.
A new system, merger, return-to-office decision and AI implementation…all emotional.
Leadership may see a business decision, while employees are wondering what it means for their job, their workload, and their future.
Emotions are operational data. What are yours telling you?
When you don’t take the time to ready your organization for change, here’s what happens:
Buy-in for the change is overestimated by leaders
Disruption is underestimated, and
Timelines collapse
Best chance for success is seeing the cracks before they widen.
#changereadiness
Amazon's laying off another 16,000 people this week. No one prepares the management team for this part of the job.
What we see in change readiness work is that even well-intentioned leaders freeze in these moments. Not because they don’t care, but because they’ve never been...
The managers delivering those conversations this week are carrying something most leadership development completely ignores, the weight of leading people through change they didn’t choose and can’t control. That’s the gap that breaks transformation efforts. Not bad strategy.
I’m noticing Ai isn’t just changing the way we work, it’s also changing our vernacular.
We’re now using these words more:
Prompt
Image
Gem
Asset
Artifacts
Image
What else are you hearing?
Leaders who can’t self-regulate under pressure don’t just struggle, they tank your EBITDA.
If you’re rolling out a reorg, turnaround, tech shift, or acquisition in 2026, your leaders need more than templates and talking points. They need emotional foresight and strategy.
VP of Sales watching the CEO rollout a ‘brilliant’ change initiative for the commercial team, that he’s just now hearing about. No strategy. No alignment. Just vibes.
Sounds like a mindset shift is necessary, for your sake and your team’s sake. Instead of clock watching, perhaps you should focus more on outcomes. Are they getting the work done? Is production up? Are they meeting KPIs and production targets? This is what should matter most.
ive hired and fired dozens of employees this year.
most of them weren't even bad at media buying.
i just can't have people clocking in at 9 and clocking out at 5
i doubled salaries where the minimum was 6 figures at the lowest and still the employees would only work set hours and not want to go the extra mile when i as the owner gets the clients, manages the teams and still manages ad accounts and oversees all client comms.
some people genuinely just don't have it in them.
Be honest, after a major org’l change, have you ever have used a workaround instead of following the new process?
A Every time.
B Sometimes, if the change didn’t make sense.
C Rarely. I try to adapt.
D Never. I’m all in once it’s rolled out.
Please QT, so others can respond too