There is a moment I have witnessed more than once during organisational change.
The leadership team has spent weeks preparing the strategy. The presentation is polished. The roadmap looks convincing. Everyone leaves the town hall believing the difficult part is over. A few days later, I sit with a project team.
Someone asks quietly:
“So… what exactly changes for us?”
That question has stayed with me throughout my career.
Not because people hadn’t received the information. Because nobody had helped them translate strategy into everyday work.
I believed successful change depended mostly on having the right plan.
Working across project management, partner management and organisational transformation changed that view.
Plans matter. Communication matters. But neither creates alignment on its own.
Alignment happens when people begin to build a shared understanding of what change actually looks like inside their own meetings, projects and decisions.
Without that conversation, everyone starts filling the gaps differently.
I remember one cross-functional initiative involving several international stakeholders.
The objectives were clear. The timeline was realistic.Everyone agreed during steering committee meetings.
Yet after only a few weeks, small misunderstandings started appearing: Different interpretations of priorities. Different expectations about ownership. Teams waiting for decisions that others assumed had already been made.
Nobody was resisting the project. People were simply working from different mental maps.
Looking back, I realised something important: we had spent considerable time explaining what was changing.
Almost none discussing how we would work differently together.
Most organisations invest heavily in communication plans. Far fewer invest in collective sense-making.
The distinction matters. Information answers questions. Dialogue creates understanding.Those are not the same thing.
Whenever I facilitate conversations around change today, I try to move beyond presentations.
Instead of asking:“Does everyone understand?”
I ask different questions.
“Which part of this change still feels unclear?”
“What assumptions are we making?”
“What will you personally need to do differently next Monday?”
Those conversations are mostly uncomfortable but they are always productive.
Because uncertainty becomes visible before it becomes frustration.
One lesson has stayed with me across every organisation I’ve worked with.
People don’t need leaders who always have perfect answers. They need leaders who create enough clarity for everyone to move in the same direction, even when not every detail has been decided yet.
That’s what leading through change looks like in practice. Not certainty. Shared understanding.
Reflection
The next time your organisation launches a change initiative, resist the temptation to ask whether people received the message. Instead, ask something much simpler.
“Have we created enough space for people to make sense of it together?“
That conversation is often where real change begins.
Noemi Salamone works with international teams navigating change, communication and collaboration across cultures.
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