​Hey Reader,​

I’ll be honest with you: no organization I’ve ever encountered has had the capacity to change well. Even the best leaders either optimistically overestimate capacity or are in denial about the resourcing and bandwidth of their teams.

And in their darker moments? They might acknowledge that their teams don’t have the resourcing and bandwidth for change, but think This is just the way it is! We can’t keep piling on endless resources. They’re just going to have to deal with it and power through.

Deep down, they know what that leads to: burnout, exhaustion, confusion, sloppy work, missed deadlines, stretched timelines, working late, and honestly? Misery. For their teams and for them.

If you feel this way, you’re not alone! Everyone is under-resourced. Times are tight across most industries and the future is more uncertain than ever. But the truth is, when you’re expected to deliver change results on top of your already under-resourced work, change fails and your daily work suffers. And that’s true for everyone.

The good news is that in most cases, the solution actually isn’t just to pile on more resources, like headcount or budget

At least not at first.

When leaders bring me in to help them design strategies and navigate change, the first step in our work together is to deeply understand the current state of affairs so that we design strategies with clarity and intention.

When we are able to tackle that first step well, our second step most often includes reducing barriers to success, cutting excess, and tightening processes so that we have the capacity-building energy, resource optimization, and overall organizational effectiveness to approach the actual change strategy as best we can.

In other words, the very best way to approach change is to be ready; to assess, reduce, and optimize before you begin. (And if you’ve begun already? You’re definitely not alone. And the best time to start is now.)

So what does this all look like?

Reducing barriers to success

One reason it is essential to deeply understand the current state of affairs before you design a strategy is that it is the only way to design a strategy that truly works – that is successful and is the least disruptive to those most impacted.

I’ll be blunt here: most people who are trying to change things – consultants included – don’t do this. They (leaders, consultants, anyone “in charge”) barge in with their bright ideas and best practices and try to impose a new order on top of whatever else is already going on – with no clue stands in the way.

Imagine you’re trying to run a race and there are holes and hills all over the racecourse. People start talking about how to build bridges over the holes or shiny new steps and slides to get up and down the hills more easily.

But wait.

Does anyone here have a shovel? Could we dig up the hills and use the dirt to fill in the holes? (And wait: why are these hills and holes even here? And wait: Should we be running a race on this course? And wait: Should we be running a race?? We won’t know until we understand the current state).

Cutting excess

Normally, I try to afford Mr. X as little time and attention as humanly possible, but bizarrely, when someone asks what I do these days, a very simple shorthand has been, “You know what Musk did with DOGE? Kind of like the idea of that, but not like that at all, and in the exact opposite way of every way he and his minions did it.” The other person usually chuckles and says something like, “Oh so, like, actually helping?”

Yeah.

I cut what is draining, mindless, meaningless, pointless, ineffective, confusing, soul-sucking, silo-building, wheel-spinning, and wasteful to make way for abundance. And I cut with care.

Tightening processes

Can your team do the work? Can they do any work? Do projects fall behind because calendars don’t align for project meetings, are calendars full of meetings because folks can’t do asynchronous work, can they not do asynchronous work because everything is a meeting and calendars are full, are teams so overloaded that delays are due to dependencies (which makes people point fingers)? How does work get done, or not? How can we do it better, or not? Do we need SOPs, MVPs, simple checklists, nothing at all, to cut, to build, to converse, to read, to think?

People often see processes as restrictive, but a good process simply frees up resources (time, headspace, etc.) for creativity, imagination, and problem solving.

Do I do change a little differently? Yes

But my clients do their work a little differently also. We know that when you’re trying to make the world a better place, the status quo won’t cut it.

And if you do your work differently too, I'd love to hear from you.

Thanks, as always, for reading <3

Talk soon,

Caitlin Harper
​Founder, Commcoterie

P.S. – This year I’ve been (happily) busy helping clients launch new nonprofit organizations, improve access to government services, and increase adoption of new technology. Because of this, I will only be taking on one new client for the rest of 2025!

If this is your year to start leading your teams through change well, let me know so that we can set up time to talk. At the very least, I’ll leave you with a better idea of your next best step.

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