7 minutes
Practice and repair Take this back to one live change this week.
What you’ll be able to do Identify the practical implication of “Practice and repair” and apply it to one live DHS decision connected to Change Management: Bringing People Along. Compare the responses to this question and explain your choice: What should happen before the work is locked? Document a next step for Practice and repair: Choose one live work object, name a change or formal escalation, assign an owner, and set the date the result will be reviewed. The course ends when the next rollout is more honest than the last one.
From evidence to ordinary work You now have a definition of what you move, a pattern for how this fails, a chair test, two frames, and a six-move loop. This lesson turns that into one change you already own — not a special “change-management project.”
Pick work that is already on your calendar: a template, a huddle script, a partner notice, a reorg conversation, a system step. Small and complete beats a strategy deck with no date.
In this lesson Choose one live change and run the chair test.
Practice a repair that does not blame the person left out.
Set a seven-day leadership transfer.
Know the job aid and the formal doors you must not skip.
If they find out last, you did not manage the change. You mailed it.
Lesson 1, to take with you Three approaches, used together Fix the next rollout Apply the job aid to one change you sponsor. Name, invite, sequence, listen, close. Small and complete.
Fix one template The unit’s announcement email, decision memo, or project kickoff. If the template asks who is missing and what ends, every future sponsor inherits the method.
Fix the culture tell If people who name holes are called negative, interrupt it. If last-minute announcements are praised as decisive, stop praising them. Culture is what gets applause.
Return to the table. The question is whether the people who will live with the change still have a way to move the design.
Repair without theater You will miss. Repair is: name the miss, get comparable information to the people who were skipped the same day, change the sequence so it does not repeat, and skip the speech that makes them manage your embarrassment. “You should have heard this from me before the public did. Here is the one-pager today. Supervisors are briefed before notices go out from now on. I’m sorry we made you absorb that.”
Constraints you will hit Time Confidentiality Partners Urgency theater
Hard dates exist. Many “emergencies” are late starts. When the date is real, shorten the loop; do not delete the Monday-morning people.
Personnel, legal, and security constraints are real. You can still say what you know, what you don’t, and when you’ll know more — without leaking what you must not leak.
Counties, Tribal Nations, and providers have their own calendars and duties. DHS still sets the tone for changes we host. Do not lower the bar because a partner is used to being surprised.
If everything is urgent, you are choosing not to sequence. Write the list. Pick. Tell people what waits.
Seven-day transfer Do these four things in the next seven calendar days. They are small enough to finish and large enough to count as leadership.
Seven-day list Pick one live change. Write a half-page: what changes, what ends, who lives with it.
Name five Monday-morning roles and invite at least two of them while something can still move — or honestly label it a briefing.
Put “who hears it before the public?” on the calendar invite for that change.
Tell your team, in one paragraph, that naming a hole will not be treated as a problem — then follow it when the first hole arrives.
Principles to keep when the week gets loud The person is not the problem The sequence, the map, or the unnamed ending is. The person who pushed back gave you information.
Influence has to be real Do not call it engagement if the page cannot still change. Brief with dignity instead.
Formal doors are not optional Labor, Tribal consultation, and civil rights are not “extra comms.” Use the right path.
Close the loop or you taught them not to speak What we heard. What we changed. What we will not. That note is the product.
The memo can stay. It cannot be the whole method.
The feedback loop Intention → who could still change it → who heard it before the public → what broke → revision. If you never ask who could still change it, you will congratulate yourselves for launches that only worked for people already in the room.
Sort these leadership moves Write what ends on your next go-live.
Choose a category Do this week Use a formal path Do not do Ask whether Tribal consultation applies before you lock a date that affects Tribal programs.
Choose a category Do this week Use a formal path Do not do Call a quiet skeptic “not a team player” in a staff meeting.
Choose a category Do this week Use a formal path Do not do Brief public-facing staff before a client letter.
Choose a category Do this week Use a formal path Do not do Wait to mention a hours change until after it starts, then “engage.”
Choose a category Do this week Use a formal path Do not do Check matches Reset People are not tired of change. They are tired of being the last to know and the first to absorb it.
Lesson 2, to take with you What to do next Open the Along-Loop Job Aid and keep it beside your next rollout. This course is original One DHS instructional content for staff practice. For bargaining, Tribal consultation, and civil-rights questions, use those formal doors. This is not a substitute for them.
You have finished the six lessons when you complete the checks and open the job aid. The work is the next change you sponsor.
Put this lesson to work What you can change You control whether practice and repair changes a live DHS process connected to Change Management: Bringing People Along or remains information on a page.
What to watch for The team completes the learning, keeps the same default, assigns no owner, and never checks who carries the burden.
Your next step Choose one live work object, name a change or formal escalation, assign an owner, and set the date the result will be reviewed.
Carry this forward Take this back to one live change this week.
You control whether practice and repair changes a live DHS process connected to Change Management: Bringing People Along or remains information on a page.
Choose one live work object, name a change or formal escalation, assign an owner, and set the date the result will be reviewed.
Completion is shown by a scenario decision, a knowledge-check response, a completed sort and a saved one-minute commitment.
Choose one live work object, name a change or formal escalation, assign an owner, and set the date the result will be reviewed.
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Reset this lesson
Previous lesson Back to course Carry this into practice Do not announce a change and call it leadership — bring the people who will live with it along.
Return to the experience: What did you notice or try, whose perspective informed it, and what would you keep or adjust?
Participation and course completion in this program do not count toward DHS-required training credits unless management, a director, or DHS leadership expressly approves an exception.
