When you’re transforming to a product-led organization, change management is futile without the necessary change leadership approach to drive the process. 

A recent client came to the Tuckpoint team saying, “We did all the things we’re supposed to do, but our people don’t wanna change!” Maybe you’ve heard or felt that before, and it wouldn’t be surprising, considering data shows that only 27% of leaders feel strongly prepared to help their people navigate change.* 

In the case of our client, the root cause of the issue was the mindset that a communications plan and list of activities would be enough to encourage people to work in completely new ways. Herein lies the difference between change leadership and change management, which is what I’ll detail in today’s article (with support from Tuckpoint Advisory Group’s Summer Miller), along with the necessary mindset shifts every leader needs to make in order to support a successful transformation toward product-led ways of working.

Change Management vs Change Leadership

What’s the difference between change management and change leadership? In essence, it’s a broader mindset shift toward people-centered change where leaders move from saying “go!” to saying, “let’s go together.”  

I know that sounds nice and simple (if it were, we probably wouldn’t be here!), so let’s break it down even further.

In essence, change management uses a set of tools or structures to plan a change, assess key stakeholder and business impacts, manage risk, and focus on execution and measurement.

The primary objectives are to ensure that employees:

• Receive communication

• Complete change activities

• Meet deadlines for readiness

• Implement new processes or behaviors

Change leadership, on the other hand, focuses on creating a compelling vision and a path forward for the change. In doing so, leaders guide their employees to:

• Build resilience and openness to change

• Learn about anticipated changes

• Navigate reactions to change

• Connect to the change from a head and heart perspective

• Discuss questions and share feedback and ideas

• Develop and apply the skills needed for future success

How to Diagnose a Change Management vs Change Leadership Power Struggle

When Summer and I started working with the aforementioned client, we continually heard these phrases from the leadership team:

“We don’t do change well”

“We can’t handle much more”

“Our employees are resistant”

“Our leaders are struggling”

“We need a better change management plan!”

All of these phrases are especially common among legacy organizations that come with legacy employees. Things have been done one way for a long time, so any initiative around change tends to make people defensive rather than open. But that starts to shift when a change becomes more of a collective consciousness, and that starts at the top of the org.

In the case of our client, Summer was pretty quick to see that the underlying issue wasn’t that the team needed a whole new change management plan, but that they needed an order of magnitude larger: a change leadership approach. 

"When working with clients, I focus first on the environment to confirm that the conditions are good for the change to take root in the organization. It's much like ensuring the soil is fertile before planting; only then can you expect something to grow and thrive. In this engagement in particular, we recognized several early concerns, such as different interpretations of the same terms and conflicting priorities across leaders and teams. We knew that rallying people around shared outcomes and work approaches would be critical for success, which is where change leadership comes in. We used a people-centered approach to create guiding principles and working norms to help the leaders stay aligned while fostering the conditions for teams to thrive through the change." – Summer Miller, Tuckpoint Advisory Group

This is the necessary precursor to change management as it fundamentally shifts the mindsets and approaches to change within the organization. Think of it as the epicenter for change, impacting the organization at a cellular level and emanating outward to affect every organism. 

I’ve been doing this work for years, and yet I’m always humbled by these epiphanies and light-bulb moments. It’s a cathartic “aha!” for both myself and the team at large who can suddenly see the forest for the trees. 

The Benefits of Change Leadership

Summer and I led our client through a change-leadership approach and, in doing so, it dawned on me that too many organizations are caught up with change management as the key to a successful transformation, but it’s actually much more important to start with change leadership before getting into the activities of change management. 

"You can't expect people to test and learn if you require perfection. If you want people to innovate, they must be free to learn through experiences (and failure). With a change leadership approach, you involve people in shaping conditions vital to their long-term success and engagement." – Summer Miller, Tuckpoint Advisory Group

Investing in change leadership yields an organization of growth-minded people who:

• Feel safe making mistakes and asking for help without fear of judgment

• Value progress over perfection

• Are encouraged to learn through experiences

• Value challenges and see them as opportunities for growth

• Ask questions and share ideas and feedback to help each other grow and improve

When all of these things are true, it means you’ve established a baseline of psychological safety that fuels innovation, creativity, and bigger wins.

Laying the Foundation for Change Leadership

When folks used to ask if Tuckpoint Advisory Groups handled change management, I’d say “yes” all the time because transformation is change. However, as Summer and I worked on this project together, it became crystal clear to me that our special sauce lies in change leadership and supporting key leaders as they navigate the thrilling and sometimes painful process of change.

These lightbulb moments are so important! It’s actually why Summer is currently leading the broader Tuckpoint team through a Change Leadership training so that we can even better support the psychological and mindset shifts among leaders that help establish the change agility and resilience essential to transforming organizations.

"As transformation advisors, we have navigated work approaches and relationship dynamics that threaten to derail our clients' momentum. We've been exploring this in our training by looking at ways to become more people-centered in our approach through integrated change leadership. We’re finding ways to help titles at all levels participate in the change so it becomes theirs. And we're learning to reframe change as the path to growth rather than an event to get through. By building our muscle in change leadership, we can help others do the same." – Summer Miller, Tuckpoint Advisory Group

As we support visionaries and change agents in their endeavors, we’re constantly recommitting ourselves to the same growth mindsets that they leverage to make people and places work better. That means investing in our own talent through learning opportunities like this one, and ultimately planting seeds of understanding in key concepts that are critical to our clients’ success. 

In Conclusion

If you’re struggling to understand why your people just aren’t changing no matter what you do, it might mean that you haven’t focused enough on change leadership over change management. It’s everybody’s job to model change-leadership skills, and understanding the importance of people-centered change is a necessary first step on the transformation journey.

If you think you’d like a little help with that part (or a lot of help!), send me a note to schedule a free consult where I’ll let you pick my brain on the things that keep you up at night!

For related reading, check out these resources:

• The Characteristics of High-Performing Product Organizations

• How to Decentralize Decision-Making: Empowering Product Teams for Speed and Efficiency

• Reframing change: Building resilience for continuous growth

*OC Tanner, 2024 Global Culture Report