Mastering Change Management: A Guide For Sustainability Professionals
Change is constant, especially in the field of sustainability, making effective change management crucial for success. This episode dives deep into the essential principles of change management for sustainability professionals who aim to drive impactful organizational transitions. Christine Yeager discusses the importance of understanding and leveraging the change curve to guide individuals and teams through these transitions effectively. She explores key change management models, including the PROSCI model and John Kotter's perspective, and emphasizes the critical role of stakeholder engagement, empathy, and agile methodologies in navigating change initiatives. Throughout the episode, Christine shares valuable personal experiences and actionable strategies for implementing change, highlighting the importance of retrospectives, prioritization, and maintaining a clear vision to achieve sustainability goals.
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Mastering Change Management: A Guide For Sustainability Professionals
Welcome to the Change Cycle. We're going to dive deep into change management. We've already had a couple of episodes about the circular economy and are about to introduce the topic of extended producer responsibility. As the title suggests, in this episode, I also want to talk about the business practice of change management. Why do sustainability professionals need to influence change?
There’s a report from Trellis titled The State of Sustainability Profession. Trellis, if you don't know, used to be GreenBiz. They've done reports every other year for a while about the state of the sustainability professional. In this report, there's a quote, “In 2022, 74% of respondents reported that their budget had increased, whereas only 4% saw it reduced. Two years later, in 2024, only 57% saw their budgets increase, while 9% were scaled back.”
Teams are being asked to do more with less. Even though in the sustainability profession, they seem to be hiring more employees, maybe more in the finance area or what have you. If the budgets aren't increasing, then they're being asked to do more with less. In my experience, a lot of the sustainability professionals I meet are one-person teams. They are tasked to drive the sustainability agenda, and they don't have a team. They need to rely on people across the organization to help them implement that team.
In the current political climate, it's more critical than ever that sustainability professionals be able to influence change both internally and externally to be successful in their jobs. GreenBiz, now Trellis, has a new report out that talks about How to Set Sustainability Strategy in 2025. The very first step in that report is to identify and engage priority stakeholders who are critical to sustainability buy-in.
At the end of the day, as I mentioned before, the person who holds the purse strings is the one you need to influence to release funding and set strategic direction across the organization that is linked to the sustainability agenda. We're going to talk about understanding change management. What is it? We'll talk about the change curve that people generally go through emotionally. I'll talk about some steps to effective change management, and I'll give an example of where I've implemented these steps.
Three Definitions Of Change Management
Understanding change management. What is change management? If you ask different people, you might get different answers, but there are a couple of models that people generally reference. For me, I learned on the job about change management and change management practices. This person took me under my wing and helped me develop this skill when I needed it most in a job that I was very green in if you will. Meaning young and early in my career, not green from a sustainability standpoint.
Nonetheless, there's something called the Prosci model. This is one of the most widely used definitions. Prosci is a global leader in change management research. To quote it, “The structured approach that ensures changes are thoroughly and smoothly implemented and that the lasting benefits of change are achieved.” That's the definition of change management from Prosci.
Essentially, change management isn't about implementing new processes or technology, it's about ensuring that people successfully adopt those changes. As we've talked about, change is hard. Another definition of change management comes from John Kotter's perspective. A Harvard Business School professor who authored Leading Change.
Leaders must actively drive change, and maintain urgency to prevent organizations from slipping back into old habits.
He describes change management as “The process of helping individuals and organizations transition to a new way of doing business, but to focus on leadership, urgency, and sustaining momentum.” Kotter's view emphasizes the human side of change. Leaders must actively drive change and maintain urgency to prevent organizations from slipping back into old habits, especially when you're talking about a culture change.
A third definition of note is the Project Management Institute, PMI. They take a slightly different approach, “The application of knowledge, skills, and techniques to manage change and transition individuals, teams, and organizations from a current state to a future state to achieve specific objectives.” This is probably the approach that I was rooted in without knowing directly because I've spent a lot of my career trying to understand the current state to more successfully define the future state and what the reality is. This definition highlights that change management isn't a one-time event. It's a structured process that requires leadership, planning, execution, and continuous improvement.
Whether you're talking about organizational restructuring, digital transformation, cultural shifts, or new policies, change management is a discipline that ensures these transitions don't just happen but happen successfully. If anybody has ever worked at Coca-Cola or worked with people who work at Coca-Cola, you would know that, especially in the US, a reorganization happens every eighteen months or so.
You get settled in this idea of change that's going to happen. You can see it as an opportunity to push for a new change that you think needs to happen in order to align with the future of the organization, or you can be drowned in the change and feel like you cannot move. If it's happening to you every eighteen months, then things never make progress. You learn quickly that you need to lean in, focus on the work that matters most, and keep processing and moving through the change.
Here's the challenge. According to McKinsey, 70% of change initiatives fail. This is from a pretty old study, but this keeps coming up. That's not a great number. It's often because maybe, according to McKinsey anyway, businesses often focus on technical aspects of change, systems, and processes but maybe overlook the people side of the equation. Sustainability is such an emotional topic. For people who are in it, it can be a very emotional topic.
A lot of people I've met, even across companies like Coca-Cola, are personally passionate about sustainability but don't know how to push for the change that they know could happen. It's maybe outside of their current role, or maybe they feel a bit jaded, and they don't know where to start. There is this very personal aspect of sustainability and regenerative and thinking about business differently that is a very relevant aspect of the equation that needs to be addressed in order to be successful.
That's where this idea of the change curve comes into play. Before we move on, let me summarize quickly. ProSci says change management is about structured implementation and sustained benefits. Kotter emphasizes leadership, urgency, and momentum through change. PMI or Program Management Institute views it as a skill set for moving organizations toward a future state.
The Four Stages Of The Change Curve: Personal Aspects Of Sustainability
Next, let's break down the change curve. The change curve is a widely recognized model that illustrates the stages individuals experience when undergoing significant change. It is rooted in the Kubler-Ross model. Kubler is initially developed by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross to describe the five stages of grief. You may be like, “Why do you feel like change is grief?” I talk about it a lot.
When you're moving through this change, you're grieving the things you're leaving behind along the way, even if you want that change.
Sometimes, when you're moving through this change, you're grieving the things that you're leaving behind along the way, even if you want the change. For example, when I left Coca-Cola, I made that choice. I opted into this change, but there are still a lot of things that I grieved about leaving the company where I effectively grew up in my 20s and 30s, and leaving a community of people that I had built.
Coming back to the office after the pandemic was like, “I have all these friends at Coke.” I forgot that I used to hang out with people all the time and see them in the hallways. I was choosing to leave that. I had a community in Atlanta, and I wasn't choosing to leave that community or those people necessarily. I was using a different intention in my life that left some of that behind, but not because I wanted to necessarily leave everybody behind. There was some grief in that shift.
What are the four key stages of the change curve? There's shock and denial. There's frustration and anger or resistance, which can be fear, confusion, or low morale. Acceptance and exploration. That's when employees begin to see benefits and engage in learning. Commitment and integration, the new way becomes the norm.
To be honest, Coke, even during one of the reorganizations, I had a training for the employees to talk about this change curve because we were experiencing it probably so much. It opened a door for me emotionally to think through and process change in a whole new way. Especially during a reorganization at a major company, there's this survivor's guilt because maybe somebody you worked with didn't make it through and you did make it through and you then start to measure yourself up against everything.
This change curve and thinking about change through the lens of allowing yourself this compassion to grieve the change and move through it and process it can be powerful. It's especially powerful if leaders recognize these steps and then leverage them to tailor their approach. In a previous episode, I talked about some steps that I use to drive effective change. I'm going to rehash those steps in the context of the change curve.
The steps are to define the vision, understand the stakeholders, map out the change, articulate the change and the context of what matters to those stakeholders, and then celebrate the outcomes. There is also implementation, but I'm just honing in on the change aspect of it. Define the vision. What's the vision? In that vision, it needs to be what's the why behind the change. Why do we need this change?
That should be rooted in what we're trying to achieve. This helps address denial and resistance to change. As I mentioned in a previous episode, this also provides a guiding post to come back to during the exploration stage because self-doubt is real. Even more so when you have other stakeholders maybe doubting because they're resisting the change and then they start to doubt and then it creates a whole storm of doubt going on across maybe a whole project team. You can then come back to that vision.
Understand the stakeholders. Who is affected by the change and how? This is an opportunity to empathize with those affected by the change. Why might they be feeling fear, frustration, or anger? Going back to the frustration and anger step in the curve, trying to think through what's causing that. What is the resistance to change? What's motivating that resistance? Are they adversaries, or are they advocates?
Recognize that even if they're advocates, change is hard. Even those who want the change to happen will still see problems. They will still have frustration. They may be driving toward that change out of anger. You have to think through what are the pinch points that are driving that resistance and empathize with all stakeholders across that spectrum of adversary to advocate.
Map out the change. How can we make the change more smooth for everyone? What is the path of least resistance? It helps them move past the emotions of shock, denial, anger, and frustration and into acceptance and exploration. They can start to see what that change will look like. They can start to see what it means for them personally, only if you do the next step, articulate the change in the context of what matters to those stakeholders.
Once you've mapped out what it's going to look like, then you personalize what that means maybe for them and what benefits they will see based on your understanding of their frustrations and their potential resistance. Now, you can start to articulate a change in the context of what matters to them and personalize what that means. That facilitates the movement from acceptance and exploration to commitment and integration.
By addressing key stakeholders' fears, frustrations, and confusion through this step, you'll help them see how the change can be perceived as a positive. “I know these are the things that you've been frustrated by. Here is how this change is going to address those things.” Also, you can thoughtfully and proactively say, “These are the things we will not address because of X, Y, and Z reasons.” By addressing that and being transparent about that, that's where you foster trust.
Celebrating Outcomes: Empowering Teams To Be Advocates
Perhaps people can move beyond the feelings of frustration because they see the why, they see the benefit, and they see the vision. Of course, there's the hard part around implementation, but as you got them on to the journey, now let's celebrate the positive and negative results of the outcome. This can solidify and empower the team to become advocates. It can, in my case, if I've seen this step, help me turn adversaries into advocates. It gives the team members an opportunity to recognize the successes and the failures, and then provide input toward continuous improvement. What do I mean by this?
I'll give an example. As I said, I've navigated this change curve myself many times, and I lean into it now, like I'm in this denial and shock phase. Let me sit here for a minute, and then I will move on. Around 2016, during one of the many reorgs that I mentioned, I became obsessed with this idea of agile. As I said before, I've recently learned that I have ADHD and much more the inattentive type. With that comes hyperfixation.
I think I probably became hyper-fixated on this idea of agile. I could see the application beyond technology implementations into everything. I could see the connection between thinking agile, working agile, and the growth mindset. This idea of I don't know how to do it yet. We haven't implemented this yet, and thinking and putting myself in this growth mindset and not being bogged down by the long haul.
Why might I be bogged down by the long haul is that prior to thinking agile, I worked on IT projects that were of the waterfall approach. What is that? The waterfall approach is how I learned how to do IT implementations or technology implementations, which meant you spend months and months defining all of your requirements. You hand over all of those requirements to the technology team. They read the requirements, interpret the requirements, build design, design against your requirements, build against your requirements, deliver against your requirements, and a whole finished product. That's when you see it.
Change is hard, even for those who want change to happen.
Agile, on the other hand, you have requirements, but mostly, you have acceptance criteria. It gets you to think differently. What needs to be true for me to accept this technology solution? It's a different way to think about your requirements. You then hand those over to a team, and you are a member of that team along the journey. You have daily standups, and you talk through and you answer questions on the fly.
As they build a small set and a piece of the puzzle, they bring you that piece of the puzzle and they say, “Is this in line with where you're expecting the finished puzzle to look like?” You say yes or no, and then you move on. You adjust every day, almost. You're constantly making these minor tweaks as a team. When you do get to the final product, it's not a surprise reveal, it's exactly what you expected it to be, and you helped build it, and so you are invested in it.
The other thing, which is my favorite part, is the retrospective. The retrospective is when you talk through what worked and what didn't at the end of each chunk of delivery. That is celebrating the outcome. It's saying what worked? All of these things were great. Even when you're frustrated and you feel, and you fall into this mindset of everything was failing. When you force yourself to name 3 to 5 things that worked, you're like, “Yeah, these things did work. It wasn't all a failure.”
You also give space for the frustrations and you open out what didn't work. You talk about, “Based on what didn't work, what are we going to do differently next time?” That's one approach. I also like the four L's, which is, what did you like? What did you love? What was lacking, and what did you long for? This helps frame up and think a little deeper about what worked and what didn't work mentality.
I took this agile thinking and jumped into a project that was from a lot of people's perspectives, failing. There was a lot of negative commentary going on around this project. It was a lot of external stakeholders who didn't have to work with me. There was no reason. There was no leadership telling them they had to do this project that I was leading. There were, starting off, I would say 98% adversaries against this end goal. They were frustrated, and they felt like, “Another new person coming in. What is this person going to be able to do that the last person couldn't?” That feeling.
I leaned into this agile point of view. We started with a minimum viable product. This became our vision. I used everybody's input to be very clear about what we could and could not achieve against that minimum viable product. A little bit of address like, “Is this piece better or worse than the last piece? Does this thing need to happen, or is we can say no to this piece because this other piece is more important? Is this piece more important than that piece?”
We did that stacking ranking, if you will, of prioritization of what needed to be part of the minimum viable product. We got very clear on the why of the minimum viable product. We had that anchored in every conversation because this was 5% of everybody's job except for mine, so I had to keep reminding everybody, “Remember, this is the why. This is the minimum viable product. This is why we're doing it this way. We all agreed that these are the top priorities for the team that met most of all your needs.”
We had that to come back to. We used the iterative approach to build out the solution. We grounded everybody again and again so that we didn't have scope creep and we could stay within our budget. People were vocal and said, “This aspect isn't going to meet my company's needs, but I understand why we're doing it for the broader audience. I'm going to build a team internally that helps me fix this aspect of the problem because I seem to be the only one having that problem,” for example.
Sustainability professionals are always influencing change.
At the end of the day, I had turned all of those adversaries into advocates for the project. The team was like, “This is how cross-functional, cross-company projects should work more often in the future. It's this level of collaboration and focus.” That tool became a guidepost for how we work together better. How do we work better together in the future?
Sustainability Professionals Influence Change
Sustainability professionals are always influencing change. That's why I want to talk about this because that story could have been almost any sustainability-related topic. I was doing specifically a commercial execution at Coca-Cola, but it's true that all of these tough nut challenges like circularity to carbon sequestration, to how do we tackle risk mitigation, talk, and measuring and reporting out on sustainability initiatives as a risk mitigation factor.
All of these tough challenges have a lot of diverse perspectives and needs against why maybe you need to go do these activities or what the guidepost should be, and you're not going to be able to please everybody. However, you can be considerate of those concerns and feedback and still prioritize and define a clear objective and vision and why. Hopefully, use that as a way to convince some of those adversaries in your company to become advocates for the long-term vision and solution that you're looking to push.
The reality is not everybody believes that the circular economy should be prioritized. Not everyone sees the risk factors tied to climate change. Not everyone sees that there are real bottom-line risks associated with climate change. More and more people are coming to understand that, but not everybody is already there. Most sustainability professionals are already there. They forget sometimes about their journey, especially the ones that have been in the business for twenty years. It's so clear to them.
Having this skillset to just take a step back and empathize with your audience, recognize this change curve, and use it to your advantage to then influence decision-makers at your company can be so valuable. The proven steps to change management, define the vision, understand the stakeholders, map out the change, and then articulate that change in the context of what matters to those various stakeholders, and then celebrate the outcome.
I'll end with this. Why embrace change management? Because change is hard, even for those who want it to happen. Embracing that reality and creating a path of least resistance for you and your stakeholders is so valuable. Change management is a proven tool across businesses that can be easily picked up and applied to sustainable business or regenerative business. Embrace change management, and don't forget that not everyone knows all the things that you know, so bring them on your journey.