What a Bathroom Sign Taught Me About Change Management
The riskiest project of your career likely isn't launching a new program or a $2M capital campaign.
It's making a change.
Case in point: Around 2012, I led an effort to convert several multi-user, gender-designated restrooms to all-gender at an organization I worked for. It came at the request of transgender community members who wanted to "pee in peace," free from side-eye and harassment. It seems routine now, but at the time, it was ahead of most organizations.
A restroom sign is a facilities change. I could have called Facilities Services and swapped a few signs. Boom. Done. Next?
But what the signs represent –– who feels safe, who feels seen, and who feels valued –– is wrapped up in all kinds of social and cultural dynamics. No wonder people have strong feelings about restrooms!
Imagine if I'd made that call, filled with good intentions and sound reasoning. Signs go up overnight without conversation, context, or buy-in. People feel blindsided by a decision affecting their daily life without being consulted. Within a week, signs are torn off, a heated email thread is circulating, and I'm fielding angry calls. The decision might have been right, but it wouldn't have mattered because trust would already be broken.
I'm glad we treated this with the care it deserved. Instead of a quick phone call, it included:
🦊 Community listening sessions to understand the range of concerns
🦊 Conversations with standing committees whose buy-in mattered
🦊 A few rounds of proposed solutions before honing in on the right one
🦊 A direct communication to the community about the change, and why
The project wasn't just successful, it's enduring. I visited two weeks ago and washed my hands in one of those converted restrooms, alongside folks across the gender spectrum.
I keep coming back to this when weighing whether a change needs full change management, or just a plan and a good announcement email.
For me, the central test is: Does this touch power, identity, or belonging?
Maybe it feels small on paper, or would never make local news. But if it touches who people believe themselves to be –– or are allowed to be –– in your organization, it needs intention and deep care.
The tricky part? You don't always know which you're facing until you're elbows deep.
Sometimes you brace for a fight, build a careful process, and the change lands easily, leaving you to wonder if all that care was overkill.
Sometimes the opposite happens: something gets waved through as a simple tweak, and you're bewildered by the swift, vocal resistance that follows.
Plot twist! If you're met with peace, that's not proof you didn't need the process. It might be proof your process worked. People who feel heard, who watch you take something seriously instead of rushing it, are far less likely to dig in and fight. Calm can mean you did the work that made the fight unnecessary.
If your organization is facing a change that might be about more than logistics — and you're not sure whether it needs a plan or something slower and more deliberate — I'd love to help you figure out which one you're looking at.