Digestion is critical to change metabolism. People need to time to digest change. This is tricky though. If you expect people to change without processing, you’ll get bloated unhappy people. Here’s a way I’m trying to view the digestion phase of change.
The faster the change needs to be digested, the more you should allow for process time.
So, if you’re going to make a major change tomorrow (and you have no choice) and it’s going to affect people who don’t even know it’s coming, you should probably clear today’s calendar.
I’m not at all convinced that we can’t change rapidly when needed. The problem is speed. The problem is the ratio between speed and process time.
Processing helps digestion occur faster. It’s not a silver bullet, but it is immensely important in metabolizing change and keeping your team aligned around what matters.