Why Brisbane's Change Management Training Scene is Completely Backwards (And How to Fix It)

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Here's something that'll make you spit out your morning coffee: 78% of Brisbane businesses think change management training is about teaching people to "embrace change."

Dead wrong.

After 18 years of running change programs across Queensland - from tiny Fortitude Valley startups to massive mining operations in the outer suburbs - I can tell you that the biggest myth in our industry is this whole "resistance to change" nonsense. People don't resist change. They resist being changed BY someone else without having a bloody say in it.

And Brisbane? We're particularly guilty of this backwards thinking.

Last month I was facilitating a session for a major retail chain (won't name names, but let's just say they've got stores from Carindale to Chermside). The HR director started the meeting by saying, "We need to help our staff overcome their resistance to our new systems." I stopped her right there.

Wrong question entirely.

The right question is: "How do we involve our people in designing the change so they actually want it to succeed?"

See, most change training in Brisbane focuses on the wrong end of the equation. We spend hours teaching managers how to "communicate change effectively" and "manage resistance." But we barely scratch the surface of what actually makes change stick: psychological ownership.

The Brisbane Problem: We're Training the Wrong People

Here's where most organisations get it spectacularly wrong. They send their managers off to some generic change management course at the Convention Centre, learning the same tired ADKAR model that every other consultant is peddling. Meanwhile, the people who actually have to live with the changes daily? They're sitting at their desks wondering what fresh hell is about to be unleashed upon them.

I learned this the hard way back in 2019 when I was working with a logistics company in Pinkenba. Spent three weeks training their management team on "leading change effectively." Beautiful PowerPoints. Engaging activities. Even had some decent catered lunches from that Vietnamese place on Kingsford Smith Drive.

Complete disaster.

Know why? Because while we were teaching managers how to "sell" change to their teams, nobody bothered asking the warehouse staff what changes would actually help them do their jobs better. Turns out they had about fifteen brilliant ideas that would've saved the company six figures annually. But nobody asked.

That's when I realised we've got the whole thing arse-about. Change training shouldn't be about teaching people to accept change. It should be about teaching them to design it.

The Real Secret: Start with the End Users

Most Brisbane change programs follow this predictable pattern: Senior leadership decides what needs to change. Middle management gets trained on how to implement it. Front-line staff gets told what's happening. Everyone acts surprised when it doesn't work.

Here's what actually works: Start with the people doing the work. Every single time.

I'm working with a healthcare organisation in South Brisbane right now (shout-out to the team at Princess Alexandra - they're absolutely killing it with their innovation approach). Instead of training managers first, we started with the nurses, admin staff, and orderlies. Asked them one simple question: "If you could change three things about how we do things around here, what would they be?"

The answers were gold. And here's the kicker - when people design their own changes, they don't need to be "sold" on implementing them. They're already invested.

But here's where it gets interesting. Once the front-line staff had mapped out their ideal changes, THEN we brought in the management team for training. Except we weren't training them on change management theory. We were training them on facilitation, listening, and implementation planning.

Completely different conversation. Much better results.

Brisbane's Hidden Advantage: Our Collaborative Culture

One thing Brisbane has going for it - and this might sound a bit wanky, but bear with me - is our naturally collaborative approach to problem-solving. Maybe it's the subtropical climate making us more laid-back, or maybe it's just the Queensland way, but people here are generally more willing to work together than their counterparts in Sydney or Melbourne.

I've run identical change programs in all three cities, and Brisbane consistently outperforms on collaboration metrics. People here actually listen to each other. They're more likely to build on ideas rather than shoot them down. It's a massive advantage that most organisations completely waste.

The issue is that traditional change training actively works against this collaborative instinct. It turns change into something that happens TO people rather than WITH them. It's like taking a perfectly good barbecue and turning it into a formal dinner party. Technically it might be more "professional," but you've completely missed the point.

The Team Development Training Gap Nobody Talks About

Here's something that drives me mental: every change management course in Brisbane teaches communication skills. Fair enough. But how many teach listening skills? How many focus on creating psychological safety so people actually feel comfortable speaking up?

Practically none.

We spend fortunes teaching managers how to deliver clear messages about change. But if your team doesn't feel safe to tell you when something isn't working, all that communication training is worthless. You're just broadcasting into a void.

This is where managing workplace anxiety becomes crucial in change programs. Brisbane organisations are finally starting to understand that change anxiety isn't something to "overcome" - it's information. It's your team telling you that something in your approach needs adjustment.

Smart organisations use anxiety as a diagnostic tool. If your change program is creating high stress levels, that's not a training problem - it's a design problem.

Why Most Change Training is Actually Counter-Productive

I hate to break it to you, but most of the change management training happening in Brisbane right now is making things worse, not better.

Think about it: You take a group of managers, teach them a bunch of theories about change curves and resistance patterns, then send them back to implement changes using frameworks that treat their teams like objects to be moved around rather than humans with agency and expertise.

It's completely dehumanising. And people can smell it from a mile away.

I was chatting with a mate who works for one of the big banks (the one with the red logo - you know the one). Their head office just spent $200,000 on change management training for their branch managers. The curriculum? All about "overcoming resistance" and "driving adoption."

Three months later, they're scratching their heads because their latest system rollout is going about as well as the Broncos' 2020 season. Staff are finding creative ways to work around the new processes. Productivity is down. Morale is in the toilet.

Surprise, surprise.

The Fix: Flip Your Training Model Completely

Want to know what works? Here's the framework I've been using with Brisbane organisations for the past five years:

Instead of training managers on change management, train everyone on change design. Instead of teaching people to implement other people's ideas, teach them to generate and test their own solutions.

Start with this question: "What would need to be different for this workplace to be somewhere you'd actively recommend to your best friend?"

Then teach people the skills to answer that question systematically. Problem identification. Root cause analysis. Solution design. Small-scale testing. Feedback loops. Iteration.

It's not change management - it's change creation. And it's infinitely more effective because people are implementing their own ideas rather than someone else's.

Brisbane's Supervisor Training Workshop Evolution

The supervisor training scene in Brisbane has started evolving in the right direction, but we're still not quite there yet. Too many programs are still stuck in the old command-and-control mindset where supervisors are expected to be change enforcers rather than change facilitators.

Modern supervisors need completely different skills. They need to know how to run effective problem-solving sessions. How to create psychological safety. How to facilitate cross-functional collaboration. How to test and iterate on solutions quickly.

These aren't traditional "leadership" skills - they're innovation skills. And they're absolutely critical for making change work in today's environment.

But here's what most training programs miss: supervisors can't facilitate change effectively if they're not included in the design process themselves. You can't teach someone to engage their team in change creation if their own role in the organisation is purely implementation-focused.

The Science Bit (Because Someone Always Asks)

There's solid research backing up this approach, but I won't bore you with academic citations. Here's the short version: When people have input into designing changes that affect them, their commitment to making those changes succeed increases by roughly 300%.

When they don't have input? Commitment actually decreases below baseline levels. People don't just resist the change - they actively work against it, often subconsciously.

This isn't about being "nice" to people or "managing their feelings." It's about basic human psychology. We're wired to protect our autonomy and competence. Change programs that threaten either of those will trigger defensive responses every single time.

Brisbane organisations that get this right see dramatic improvements in implementation speed, adoption rates, and long-term sustainability. The ones that don't... well, they keep hiring consultants to figure out why their changes aren't sticking.

What This Means for Your Organisation

If you're responsible for change initiatives in Brisbane, here's my advice: Stop training people to implement changes. Start training them to design changes.

Stop measuring "change readiness." Start measuring "change capability."

Stop trying to overcome resistance. Start trying to leverage expertise.

And for the love of all that's holy, stop sending your managers to generic change management courses and expecting different results. The definition of insanity applies to corporate training too.

The Bottom Line

Change training in Brisbane needs a complete overhaul. We need to stop treating change as something that happens TO organisations and start treating it as something that emerges FROM them.

The organisations that figure this out first are going to have a massive competitive advantage. The ones that keep doing things the old way? They'll keep getting the same disappointing results and wondering why their people "just don't get it."

Your people get it just fine. They're waiting for you to get it.

Time to flip the script.