A client of mine, a regional distribution business with operations across dozens of locations, needed to evolve. They needed to expand the customer base. Their new strategy was to focus on the power of relationships, given their local presence. They had a strong branch operation and now wanted the branch managers to focus on client acquisition and expansion.
The challenge they faced was their branches were operationally focused. The branch manager’s success was rooted in running operations efficiently. It’s why they were hired, what they were measured against, and what determined the skills they had honed over the years.
The new strategy required going beyond task efficiency to include marketing and building strong community relationships. They had to own the revenue side as well as operational efficiency.
Essentially, they were being asked to operate more like business owners than operations managers.
The strategy was right, but the executive team quickly became bogged down in the execution. They found themselves absorbed in the individual dynamics of each location — this manager was resistant, that one lacked the skills, another had a territory that made it harder. Each situation was real, and managing all of them simultaneously was consuming everything.
I stopped the conversation and invited them to think of their branch operation as a single person. I then asked, “How would you describe who that person is today? What do they believe about their job? What are they proud of? What does success look like to them?”
At first this was challenging. They kept getting pulled back to individual situations, individual people. But I continued inviting them back to the single person. Gradually, a picture emerged of someone we named Branchie.
Branchie took pride in what they did, in fact their identity was tied to operational excellence—running a tight ship, knowing the numbers, solving problems quickly.
The executive team began to see that, for the brand managers, this new strategy most likely would feel like being told that what they’d spent years mastering no longer mattered, not experienced as a growth opportunity. After the team identified that problem, the conversation shifted. The complexity didn’t go away, but it became navigable. Instead of managing dozens of individual situations through a genuinely difficult transition, they were able to work with the underlying pattern that set the tone for the whole group.
The first step was to define a new narrative about who the branch manager was, their importance, and the value they would contribute. A narrative that includes their past sense of identity and adds onto it. This positioned the new strategy as less of a threat and more so a path that didn’t ask a person to abandon their story, but to expand it. The operational expertise wasn’t a liability. It was the foundation to build on. The question wasn’t whether they could become something different. It was whether they could see themselves becoming something more.
It’s often said what you teach is what you need to learn. Working with this client helped me reflect on something that was happening in my own organization.
I have been working with clients using the TLO framework for a number of years. I’ve trained other consultants to incorporate it in their practices. They knew it and could discuss it intelligently. Yet, when the pressure was on, they would address their challenges from the old framework—organization as a system with a malfunction to diagnose and fix, rather than a person navigating a transition.
I came to realize there is a huge difference between knowing about a new way of seeing and actually operating from seeing through the new lens. That executive team didn’t just learn a framework in that session. They made a perceptual shift. They stopped seeing a change management problem and started seeing a person with a history, an identity, a set of beliefs about who they were, now being asked to become someone new.
That’s why the change initiatives of a new strategy, though logically sound, often fail. Not because the strategy is wrong. Not because the people lack capability. Because the organization, as a person, hasn’t made the inner shift the outer change requires.
You can redesign the role, rewrite the job description, rebuild the incentive structure. But if the story people are carrying about who they are hasn’t shifted, the new behaviors won’t hold. Reverting is what staying true to yourself feels like from the inside.
If you’re in the middle of a strategic shift right now and it’s moving slower than it should, “Why aren’t they getting it?” is likely the wrong question to ask. A better question is, “Who is this organization as a person, and what would it take for that person to want to become who we need them to be?”
Does this feel familiar? If this sounds like what you are dealing with, let’s talk. Sometimes a conversation with someone with a different perspective is exactly what’s needed to move things forward.