Turning doubters to believers: street-smart change management

In our talks, we made a big promise to our audience: that after our session, they would be able to embrace complexity and awaken the street-smart person within them. It’s a bold claim, but this playbook is how we deliver on it.

It stands on three principles. Let’s break them down.

To show why the emotional journey is everything, Djavad and I often turn to football. He’s a die-hard Liverpool fan, I played football for 26 years, and we both know the spo

For years, the team was struggling (which, as a Manchester United fan, I’ll admit I used to enjoy). But then, Klopp entered the chat with his big smile and very white teeth.

When Klopp was asked what success would look like, he didn’t promise trophies. He set a different first milestone: belief. If the fans believed in the team – win or lose – the foundation was right. From day one he worked on the emotional contract: one story, one language, visible rituals, celebrating graft and small steps. Doubt wasn’t treated as defiance, it was a signal to engage. The silverware came later because belief came first.

That’s what many transformations miss. They perfect the map (plans, roadmaps, org charts) but don’t inhabit the territory (how change feels on Monday morning). People don’t resist change, they resist being handled. Resistance is information. The real danger is quiet compliance – every milestone green while nothing important shifts in how people think, decide, or relate.

So, rule number one:

The emotional journey matters.

You must focus on people. Your job isn’t just to roll out a new tool or process – it’s to turn doubters into believers.

And to guide others on that journey, you start with yourself: how you show up, how you’re perceived, and how consistently you tell the story. That’s where being street‑smart begins.

As a leader in change, you have to think about how you are perceived to be successful. Hence you have to be street-smart about it. We wanted to share how it’s done.

But, it’s a bit funny, isn’t it? We created a formula for being street-smart, which is supposed to be all about savvy and instinct. But go with the flow. Think of this as your personal development map – a way to become street-smart by being a little bit book-smart first.

Our Street-Smart Formula is composed of six key ingredients. As a leader, how you’re perceived is critical. If you’re missing one of these, you create a leadership gap that your teams will feel immediately. Let’s walk through each of them.

Observation: The Art of Seeing What’s Really There
You have to see what’s really happening. Think of the slow-motion scenes in the Sherlock Holmes movies with Robert Downey Jr., where you see him observe every detail to plan his next move. That’s what I aspire to – to be the Sherlock Holmes of organisational observation. Without it, you’re perceived as Blind, like a Don Quixote mistaking windmills for giants and focusing on all the wrong things.

Instinct: Trusting Your Gut to Act
Sometimes, you just have to shoot from the hip. It’s the Han Solo philosophy of “Never tell me the odds.” If you’re constantly overthinking, you’ll delay action until the opportunity is gone. Without instinct, you’re perceived as Lost in analysis paralysis, and you destroy the moment.

Adaptability: Being Like Water
As Bruce Lee famously said, “Be like water.” Things change, and that’s fine. We are constantly changing as human beings, so why do we try to grasp onto old stuff so desperately? If you refuse to adapt, you’re perceived as Stubborn. No one will follow a leader who refuses to change course when the terrain inevitably shifts.

Hustle: Leading from the Front
This one is my favourite. My surname is Husell, and every day I’m Husellin’ when leading change with my clients. You need to put in the effort, lead the change from the front. If you’re a leader who just tells people what to do from an ivory tower, you’re seen as Lazy. You have to be on the ground, showing what it takes.

Influence: Making Your Voice Matter
When I was a kid, I’d come home from school and watch Oprah Winfrey (I know, maybe a bit weird for a kid). Her ability to connect and persuade is incredible. In an organisation, influence is currency. It’s not just what you say, but how you say it and the impact you make. Without it, you can have all the other traits, but your best ideas will simply be Ignored.

Grit: The Power to Persevere
This one is Djavad’s favourite. It’s perseverance, the ability to take a hit and keep moving forward. It’s about seeing the obstacle as the way. If you quit when things get hard or jump ship at the first sign of trouble, you’re just an Opportunist. Your team will see it, and they’ll never fully trust you again.

So, you’re focused on the people (Principle 1) and yourself (Principle 2). Now for the practical tools. This final principle, “Use a map and a plan,” is a toolkit with three essential components: a playbook for engaging your team, a strategy for managing your stakeholders, and the ultimate map to guide the entire journey.

A: The Playbook for Turning Doubters into Believers

So, how do you manage that all-important emotional journey? Here are five critical focus areas we see organisations get wrong all the time.

Consistent Communication, Not One-Off Announcements
Communication is not a side hustle you can assign to someone for 25% of their time. A single town hall announcement is a recipe for failure. Real communication is constant, it goes back and forth, and most importantly, it involves listening just as much as talking. Without it, the entire change effort will unravel.

Managing Change Fatigue
You cannot push an endless stream of changes without providing support. People will burn out. It’s crucial to build capabilities as you go, upskilling people so they feel competent, not overwhelmed. You can’t coach someone who is already running on fumes and doesn’t have the mental or emotional capacity left to listen.

Winning Over the Middle Management
I once took over coaching a team whose product owner had been telling them, “This will never work, we’ve tried it before.” My first retro with them was the weirdest I’ve ever had. I had my camera on, they were all just black screens. Total, deafening silence. The toxicity had spread from one influential person and infected the entire team. You have to get these key people on your side before you make your move. Otherwise, there’s a risk for toxic wildfire.

Applying the 80/20 Rule to Your Energy
Focus 80% of your time and energy on the believers. Support them, amplify their voices, and empower them to build momentum for the change. You must address the 20% of your time on the doubters, but you cannot let them stall the entire process. At some point – and this is the hard part – you have to stop giving the loudest, most negative voices the microphone.

Having a Dedicated Change Team
You need a team that lives and breathes the change, one that is close to the action. This team cannot operate solely from an ivory tower, nor can they be completely siloed in their departments. To be effective, your change team needs members from all the different parts, “the different streets of change”, of your organisation, so you always know what’s really going on.

B: The Strategy for Street-Smart Stakeholder Management

There’s another group of people whose support is non-negotiable: your stakeholders. Without their buy-in and sponsorship, even the best-planned change will run out of steam very quickly. Here’s how we stay street-smart when managing up.

Aligning the Vision to Avoid Chaos
Misaligned sponsors are a recipe for chaos. One thing Djavad likes to do is get all the key decision-makers in a room, give each of them a post-it note, and ask them to write down the vision for the change. The differences might not be day and night, but they are always there. These small variations have a huge butterfly effect. Think about it from a team member’s perspective: if they get three slightly different versions of the “why” from three different leaders, it just creates confusion. Aligning your goals and language up front is the only way to prevent this.

Showing Progress with Quick Wins
A major transformation might take two years or even more, but no stakeholder wants to wait that long to see results. You need to show progress along the way to build trust. These don’t have to be massive. Remember that story about the team where no one would turn on their cameras? A few weeks later, showing that half the team now had their cameras on and were starting to talk was progress. It was a small win, but it proved we were turning doubters into believers. You have to be street-smart and find these small bits and pieces that prove the change is taking hold.

Balancing Transformation with Daily Operations
This is maybe the most important part. We have to remember that daily operations pay the bills. If the money doesn’t flow, our transformation flow will stop completely. It’s a constant balancing act. If you force people to focus 100% on delivery, when will they ever have time to actually change? How can you coach someone who is so overloaded they don’t have the mental capacity to even listen? You have to protect the business, but you also must deliberately carve out and protect the time and space for the change to happen.

C: The Map Itself – The Change Formula

Finally, this is the map we use to navigate. Think of it like the ingredients for a soup. If you miss a key ingredient, the taste is just not right. It’s the same in change: you see predictable symptoms when an ingredient is missing. The Change Formula is a simple equation:

Vision + Consensus + Skills + Resources + Incentive + Action Plan = Change.

Making sure you have these ingredients in place before you start massively increases your chances of success. But this isn’t a one-time checklist. Just as when you’re navigating with a map, you have to constantly look up to check what’s really happening in the territory. You need to keep checking your formula – your map – against the real-world events in your organisation. This is how you sense, respond, and adapt to the situation as it unfolds.

Let’s break down what happens when an ingredient is missing:

Without a Vision, you get Confusion.
If people don’t know where you’re going or why, they’ll be lost from the start. “Why are we even doing this?” becomes the question that echoes in the hallways.

Without Consensus, you get Sabotage.
This is often unintentional. When leaders give different answers to the same question, they accidentally undermine each other and create chaos for their teams.

Without Skills, you get Anxiety.
Imagine being a developer one day and being told you’re a Product Owner the next, with no training. That’s a perfect recipe for anxiety, which is a powerful blocker to any change.

Without Resources, you get Frustration.
If you ask people to automate testing or deliver value faster but don’t give them the tools, pipelines, or time they need, you create immense frustration.

Without an Incentive, you get Resistance.
People will naturally wonder, “What’s in it for me?” If there’s no clear benefit for them or the company, they’ll stick to what they know and resist the change.

Without an Action Plan, you get a Treadmill.
You might feel like you’re running hard, burning energy, and having lots of meetings, but you’re not actually going anywhere.

_____________________________________________

This formula isn’t a one-time checklist. It’s a living diagnostic tool. On a weekly basis, your change team should ask: What are we seeing on the streets? Is it confusion? Anxiety? Frustration? Use the answers to adapt your focus and your actions in real-time.

Coming back to the promise we made in our talks: this is how you embrace complexity and awaken the street-smart person in you:

1. Turn Doubters to Believers: Remember, the emotional journey is everything.

2. Be Street-Smart: Use our formula to understand how you’re perceived. Sense, respond, and adapt.

3. Apply the Change Formula: Use it as your map before you start and as your compass during the journey. Revisit it weekly to stay on course.

This whole experience with giving talks across Europe – has been a journey full of moments I couldn’t have prepared for. Real change is just like that. You can’t script it. But you can show up, be present, and get really good at catching those moments when they arrive. That’s how you lead the next big change with street-smart confidence…

…and speaking of the next big change, we’re already seeing huge challenges in organisations around artificial intelligence, and we believe it’s time to share our wisdom. But more on that later – maybe in a future talk.

What’s your next street-smart step toward real change?

So, as you step away from this article, I’ll leave you with a question: How can you put yourself out there to catch moments? What’s one small, street-smart step you can take to move your own change forward?