Why the change did not last

By David Neddam

The solution came first

Take a spa where fewer guests come back. Within a week there is a new script at the front desk, a promotion and a target. Three months later the figures have not moved, and the team is tired.

Nobody was lazy. The effort was aimed at a consequence. No one had yet looked at what really happens when a guest leaves.

The HEED Method has eight Steps. Five to understand today, three to build tomorrow. Each one exists for a reason.

Understand today

Observe. Look at the situation with attention and without judgment: the behaviors, the facts, the details, the signals. Observation does not explain yet. It prepares understanding, and it refuses to conclude too fast.

Question. Observation only gives hypotheses. Questions confirm them, nuance them or prove them wrong, in a dialogue adapted to the person and the context. This is where clues take on meaning: the people, their environment, their history, the possible causes.

Identify. Connect what was seen and heard, and bring out the cause or the mechanism at the heart of the situation, so that you stop treating only its consequences. One condition: it is not enough for the professional to see it. The person, the team or the organization has to recognize it for themselves. A truth that is imposed rarely changes anything.

Realise. Understanding a situation is not always enough. This Step is about taking the full measure of what is at stake, and of what the situation produces for you, for others and for the organization. Information becomes awareness.

Accept. Awareness does not automatically lead to action. Accepting means recognizing the reality as it is and deciding that it can no longer be ignored. It is the moment you stop waiting for the situation to change by itself and take responsibility for the change.

Build tomorrow

Stretch. Lasting change is more than solving one problem. It means gradually widening the capacity to adapt, with new skills, resources, experiences and perspectives, so that the structure is more solid and holds better under the next constraint.

Strengthen. Any progress stays fragile until it is consolidated. Strengthening makes it stable enough to resist the return of old patterns, and builds the autonomy and confidence that let it hold.

Anchor. What was learned becomes a shared reference that can evolve and be passed on. Change lasts when it is written down, shared and part of how the organization works. And anchoring opens a new cycle, which starts again with observation.

Where it usually breaks

Each Step answers a specific way of failing.

• Concluding before looking. The answer arrives before the facts.
• Treating the consequence. The script changes, the cause stays.
• Imposing the diagnosis. The owner or the consultant is right, and the team has not recognized anything.
• Knowing without deciding. Everyone agrees there is a problem, and everyone waits for it to pass.
• Stopping at the first result. The progress is real, nothing consolidates it, and the old habits return.
• Keeping it in one person’s head. The lesson leaves with that person.

What to look at in your own business

Think of the last change that did not hold.

1. What did you actually observe before deciding, and what did you assume?
2. Whom did you ask, and did an answer ever change your mind?
3. Did the team recognize the cause, or were they told what it was?
4. When did someone decide that the situation could no longer continue?
5. What was done to consolidate the first progress?
6. Where is it written, and who can pass it on?

The first question you cannot answer is usually where the work begins.

What it changes

The eight Steps do not give the solution. They do not replace your knowledge of your business, or the specialists you work with.

They set an order: understand before proposing, and consolidate before moving on.

A change that lasts is rarely a better idea. It is an idea that came at the right moment.