Every great change person says it. So why do so few actually get there?Hey, how are you? This week I’ve been asked to help an amazing organisation find a superstar change practitioner, and I’ve had a number of conversations with different change folk along the way. If you think that could be you, or you know someone it would suit, have a gander at my LinkedIn post, which talks about the role in more detail. As you know, at Get Knowledge we have two doors people can walk through to work with us, Improvement or Leadership, depending on their current situation. This week sat right on the line between the two, because every one of those conversations kept coming back to the same question: what is a change practitioner actually for? Ask ten people what a continuous improvement manager does and you’ll get ten different answers. To some, they’re the problem solver. The person you call when something keeps going wrong and nobody can work out why. To others, they’re the architect of the operational excellence system: the huddles, the boards, the standard work, the rhythm. And to others still, they’re the trainer. The one who builds problem-solving capability so that everyone else can do it for themselves. Change manager. Improvement coach. CI lead. OpEx manager. The job titles shift, and so do the expectations that come with them. Often the person in the role is trying to be all three at once, for a dozen different stakeholders, each with their own idea of what “good” looks like. But underneath all of that, there’s one thing I’d hope we could agree on. We don’t want to outsource improvement. Improvement isn’t something a department does to the operation. It belongs to the operation, and to the leadership team who run it. People protect what they build. If the change person builds it, the change person ends up protecting it, usually on their own, and usually long after everyone else has moved on. The line every change person says “My job is to do myself out of a job.” I’ve said it. You’ve probably said it. Every great change practitioner I’ve met has said it, and meant it. So, here’s a question for you: how many actually do? And no, you can’t count those who have had their employment ended because of a cost-cutting exercise. Don’t get me started on that short-sightedness! In my experience, not many. And it’s rarely because of the person. It’s because of the environment we put them in. Why it so rarely happens Here are the patterns I see again and again. The role is too junior to influence. We hire someone talented, give them a title with “improvement” in it, and place them two or three levels below the people whose behaviour actually needs to change. Then we wonder why the senior team carries on as before. We don’t enable them. No real mandate, no protected time from the operation, no sponsor who will stand up in the room when it gets awkward. They’re given responsibility for change without the authority or backing to make it happen. We ask far too much of them. One person, five sites, three programmes, a training plan and the monthly board report. Spread that thinly and nothing gets the depth it needs to stick. Habits are built through frequency, and you can’t be frequent everywhere. They become the fixer, not the coach. It’s quicker to solve the problem yourself than to coach a team leader through solving it. So the change person becomes the most capable problem solver in the building, and the least replaceable. That’s the opposite of doing yourself out of a job. And when it gets difficult, people revert to type. A bad month, a cost squeeze, a new director. The huddle gets cancelled “just this week”. The problem-solving session becomes a blame session. The old way comes back because it never really left, and change goes out of the window. A better test If you’re leading an organisation, or you’re the person in that change role, here are five questions worth asking honestly:
That last one is the real test. If the answer is “it would fall over”, the job hasn’t been done yet, however many projects have been delivered. What this asks of leaders The most effective improvement work I’ve been part of had one thing in common. The leaders didn’t hand it over. They owned it. They turned up to the huddles, asked the open questions, made it safe to raise problems, and held the line when things got tough. The change person was there to coach, challenge and build capability. Not to carry it. That’s when doing yourself out of a job stops being a nice line and becomes a genuine outcome. And honestly, it’s the best compliment a change practitioner can ever receive: they don’t need me anymore. How does your organisation score? Those five questions are a good place to start. If you want to go deeper, we’ve built the Six Conditions Scorecard. It looks at the six things that decide whether change holds or quietly slips back to the old way: Ownership, Reason, Rhythm, Visibility, Behaviour and Independence. It works whatever method you use, whether that’s huddles, problem solving or a full operational excellence system. Whether you’re hiring a change practitioner, already have one, or you are one, it’ll show you where the role is being set up to succeed, and where it’s being left to carry everything on its own. 👉 Get your Six Conditions Scorecard here​ Have fun, Lee Co-Founder of Get Knowledge National Coach of the Year 2025 Author of ‘The People Puzzle’ |
Issue 101: Doing yourself out of a job?
