Most change programs choose one lens and hope it will be enough....
Some put the focus on the individual...because you know, people need to change their mindset.
Others map the process, because they say they need a better journey.
A few step back and say... well, maybe this is a systems problem...
The issue is that none of these work well alone, and what is more interesting is that most change initiatives rarely use them together.
After years of doing this work, both as an employee and as someone helping companies (and still learning) I keep coming back to three things that matter in change.
a) Mapping the system: When the problem is complex, you can't start with solutions.. even if that is your first impulse.. instead, you need a provisional view of how actors, environments and constraints interact around the work.
This is where many initiatives just skip ahead.. they jump to interventions before seeing what's connected to what.. remember that a systems map helps surface why a pattern persists, why stakeholders pull in different directions, and how changes in one area ripple elsewhere - again this is to help sense make, and you of course cannot map or see the whole system.
b) Examining the behavior in context: Once you map those interactions, you need specificity. -What actions in which roles and situations are we actually talking about? -What conditions are currently making those actions easier, harder or riskier?
Behavioral science (not behavioralism) helps structure that inquiry.. not to prescribe behavior, but to understand how current conditions are shaping it.
c) Mapping the journey: The journey is where you zoom in... it sequences how those conditions and actions play out across the steps people actually move through and shows where constraints sit and where changes to the environment around the work can be introduced and tested.
These three work together:
-The system shows relationships and feedback loops -The behavioral lens clarifies how action is currently shaped in context -The journey finds where changes can be made in practice and observed
Without the system view, you change the wrong part, without the behavioral lens, you rely on assumptions and without the journey, you see patterns but can't act in context.
This is how we work with clients.. not as three separate exercises, but as one connected process that moves from understanding the problem to designing what changes it.