Introduction of a change requires someone to sit down and think through all the possible implications of that change. This sounds simple enough, and is, as long as you keep in mind one basic premise:

You only know what you know.

In other words, you can identify all the impacts that cross your sphere of knowledge and understanding. What you need to  find out is whether there are other impacts that you don’t know about.

For example, you may be completely across how changing the sales entry process will affect your sales force and customers.  What you may not know is:

• that it will require changes to the back end systems that feed the database or the proposed functionality will not work
• and that these changes can’t be made before year end or the year to date totals can’t be reported on
• and that there’s been a freeze on IT changes because the company needs to bed down the new operating system for 3 months….
• and so on.

There’s only one solution to knowing what you know. And that is getting people from multiple functions at multiple levels to have a  conversation about the change and it’s potential flow on effects. Many a change program has  had ordinary results because the change impacts were not properly identified, leaving people scrambling to fight fires and create last minute workarounds.

Recognising that you only know what you know will make you a better change leader. Not only wt will force you to enquire broadly about how the change could affect all other parts of the organisation, it’s also a great engagement strategy.