Common Sense Isn't Common: Why Change Needs a Method

"Just use common sense" is one of the most appealing pieces of advice in change management, and, I would argue, one of the least useful. The trouble with common sense is that it isn't common. Depend on it too much for change, and an organisation doesn't get one sensible approach. It gets dozens of methods that make sense to the individual creator.

I was reminded of this recently while listening to a podcast as I worked outdoors on the farm. The guest, the originator of something called Change Rebellion, argued against leaning too heavily on change frameworks. The speaker clearly knew them well enough, including Prosci's ADKAR, the one I use most often. The view put forward was that frameworks can get in the way of what really matters: engaging with people and applying common sense. The point made about common sense was strongly emphasised too. Perhaps the speaker here has achieved such a level of capability based on experience that it has reached a level of unconscious competence which is where common sense rightly resides in all of us as tacit knowledge.

While I agree that engagement is super important, I just don't agree that common sense will get you the change outcome that you seek.

The big fat assumption

"Common sense" carries an assumption that rarely gets examined in my view: that the sense is shared. It isn't. Each of us brings our own tacit knowledge based in unique experiences, our own read on the world, our own instinct for what works. Put ten capable managers in front of the same change, ask them to use their common sense, and you'll get ten different approaches (you may even get more than 10). Each will be perfectly sensible to the person running it.

That's the real case for a framework. ADKAR (Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement) isn't valuable because it's clever. It's valuable because it's common in the sense that matters: it can be shared. It gives a team the same language, the same sequence and the same tools. It gives everyone the same answer to a simple but powerful question: what's the method?

BTW, my recommendation is that this question applies to all efforts to achieve change - what's the method?

What's the method in a paddock?

I was turning this over while out mowing field. I'd been rained off halfway through the job the day before, so there was plenty still to do.

Nobody mows a field by common sense. You ask what the method is, and the answer comes in the form of tools. For open grass of that size (about 3 acres), the mower (engine, belts, blades, fuel) does the job well. At a pinch I've used the tractor and slasher; it works, just not as cleanly. Neither will get in close under the trees without damaging them, so for that there's the line trimmer, or the whipper snipper as we call it here.

None of these tools is my invention. Each carries a great deal of accumulated know-how about cutting grass well, and that's the point. Hand the mower to anyone reasonably competent and you'll get roughly the same result. The method lives in the tool, not in the private judgement of whoever happens to be holding it. Once a tool proves fit for purpose, it earns its place in the garage, batteries charged, fuelled up and ready for next time.

Common sense is a source of noise

In an organisation, the same logic holds, and this is where it connects to my recent thesis work on System Noise. Leave change to individual common sense and you aren't leaving it to good judgement. You're guaranteeing variance.

Different leaders sequence the change differently, emphasise different things and judge readiness by different standards. Each choice looks reasonable on its own. Taken together, they produce an inconsistent experience for the people the change is meant to help, and outcomes nobody can quite explain.

A shared method is a noise-reduction device. It doesn't remove judgement; it gives judgement a common structure to work within. That's what a framework, a protocol or a well-designed process actually offers. Not rigidity, but a way for a group of quite different people to pull in the same direction.

None of this is an argument against engaging with people. It's an argument that engagement needs a method too. Without one, it becomes ten different conversations with ten different conclusions.

The question worth asking

I've spent a good deal of time in health lately, where one equivalent of a framework is a model of care. Its job is to make sure the method doesn't depend on who happens to be on shift.

So here's a question for your own organisation. If you don't have an agreed method for change, you haven't avoided having one. Change in organisations is ever-present. You're running on as many private methods as you have managers. Which one is the organisation actually using, and perhaps more importantly, what is it costing you?

If you'd like to see ADKAR in action, my free ADKAR Reflection Tool lets you check your own readiness against it gives your team a method for building shared understanding of change.

Having a method is only half the problem, though. The other half is choosing the right one, which is where I'll go next.