By Michelle Davies, CEO & Founder of Davies Winyard Associates
June 2026
After three decades in Organizational Change Management, I’ve seen countless methodologies, frameworks, and playbooks come and go. Yet one failure pattern continues to repeat itself—quietly, consistently, and often unchallenged:
A lack of broad-based participation.
Most change initiatives do a solid job engaging sponsors, project teams, and subject matter experts. These groups are typically involved early and remain actively engaged throughout the lifecycle.
But when it comes to impacted stakeholders, the approach often narrows to two familiar levers:
- Communications
- Training
Both are important—but both are largely one-way.
And that’s the problem.
The Missing Piece: Two-Way Dialogue
Change doesn’t fail because people were informed too late.
It fails because people weren’t involved early enough.
Broad-based participation means shifting from telling to engaging—creating continuous, two-way dialogue with the people who will actually live the change.
It’s about:
- Listening to stakeholder input throughout the lifecycle
- Using that input to shape more realistic, practical solutions
- Creating shared ownership—not just awareness
What Broad Participation Looks Like in Practice
High-performing change programs don’t treat stakeholders as recipients—they treat them as contributors.
They create structured opportunities for involvement, such as:
- Participating in business requirements gathering
- Contributing to solution design discussions
- Engaging in early demos to provide feedback
- Joining change champion networks
- Participating in future-state process validation workshops
- Serving as testers before go-live
- Supporting hypercare and stabilization
These are not “nice-to-haves.” They are what make change real, workable, and adoptable.
Why This Matters
When stakeholders are brought in late, resistance is predictable.
When they are involved early and continuously, something powerful happens:
- Buy-in starts before go-live
- Adoption accelerates
- Solutions improve in quality and usability
- Sustainability becomes far more achievable
Instead of a sponsor and project team working in isolation for months, the organization moves forward together.
The Bottom Line
If there’s one lesson I’ve learned after 30 years, it’s this:
Change is not something you implement to people.
It’s something you build with them.
Broad-based participation isn’t just a best practice—it’s the difference between change that struggles… and change that sticks.