21 hours ago

39 min

Why Business Change Meets Resistance with Amale Ghalbouni | Curious Business

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Every business wants change, and most probably needs it. Technology, competition and the pressure to grow all demand it. But depending on where you sit, change can feel risky, frustrating or downright frightening. It can seem that good business strategy means planning out a new normal, but when people feel change done to them rather than with them, it tends not to work. How can organisations create change without triggering an 'allergic reaction'?

Amale Ghalbouni has spent nearly two decades helping organisations change. She started as a strategy consultant handing down answers, then moved into digital transformation and agencies, working in sectors as different as horse racing, financial services, retail and automotive. Her book, Experimental, argues that the process is rarely the problem. People are: their quirks and traits, their needs and anxieties, and the “allergic reaction” most of us have to being told to do things differently.

She’s candid about when it hasn’t worked, including her own badly handled restructure and a client sponsor who wouldn’t take no for an answer. She’s also clear that the patterns aren’t unique: “You’re not that special,” she says, kindly. Her book is built on five Cs, the conditions she believes teams need to change well: connection, clarity, curiosity, courage and celebration. On a show called Curious Business, it’s probably no surprise which one stood out for me.

Listen to this episode to find out…

  • What the “Big Freeze” is, and why long, private planning creates the conditions that stop change
  • What a SharePoint site, A3 paper and a magnifying glass reveal about what leaders don’t get to see
  • Why siloed teams are more likely to have a trust problem than a process problem
  • Why someone who leads change for a living isn’t a fan of big changes
  • How curiosity can turn something that didn’t work into something worth learning from

Links

Other episodes on related topics

Chapters

00:00 — Intro
00:53 — Designing change at people, not with them
02:19 — The Big Freeze: when silence breeds fear
06:41 — “You’re not that special”
08:19 — Months and months of strategy that never works
09:15 — Strong leaders and saying “I don’t know”
10:59 — The A3 sheet, the handbag and the magnifying glass
14:04 — Silos are a trust problem
15:17 — Innovation isn’t invention
18:15 — Why Amale doesn’t believe in big changes
19:59 — Nobody measures corporate anxiety
22:54 — When the change consultant gets restructured
24:40 — “Adopt AI. What is that? I have questions.”
27:11 — Clarity: direction, priorities, guardrails
28:01 — Allies, and when to walk away
32:42 — “Can't you just work around it?”
33:44 — Damn them pesky humans
34:55 — Don’t mention the F word
37:33 — Be the one who does it first

 

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