The Very First Thing to Do When You're Leading Change | Caroline Webb | Modern Change Management & Leading Change

Here's why auditing current commitments is essential before launching any new initiative, how to overcome our powerful bias toward maintaining the status quo, and what a 19th-century philosopher's fence teaches us about intelligent transformation. When leading organizational change, it pays to first understand what's already in motion. In this bonus episode, Caroline Webb, leadership coach, former McKinsey consultant, and author of "How to Have a Good Day," reveals our tendency to add new initiatives without stopping existing ones—and how this leads to burnout and ineffective change efforts. Drawing from her experience coaching executives and leading organizational transformations, Caroline highlights our blind spot: we don't even know what we're already committed to. She shares a powerful example of mapping initiatives with a hospital CEO's team, where they discovered projects some thought were finished, others no one had heard of, and many with unclear status. What makes this conversation valuable is Caroline's no-nonsense approach to the change leader's dilemma: you can't add something new without making space by removing something else. Her insight that every choice—including not changing—comes with "prizes and punishments" and provides a powerful framework for decision-making. The audit process she describes helps not only identify what to cut, but also reveals where you can leverage existing work rather than creating something entirely new. If you're wrestling with overwhelmed teams, wondering how to create space for new initiatives, or trying to focus on what truly matters, this episode gives you actionable tools to audit your current state before embarking on any change journey. Change Signal. Cut through the blather, the BS, and the noise to find the good stuff that works in change management. 🎧 New episodes every two weeks. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter at thechangesignal.com.