The team has just finished presenting their recommendations to their leadership. Leadership is happy about their plan for building the next part of the product. After a small adjustment, leadership is on-board with the sequencing, too. Before the meeting wraps up, the team points out the work would go more quickly, with less risk, more sustainably—somehow better—if there were some changes to processes, workflows, structure, or team organization.

Leadership responds with a smile. “We’re ready for change!”

The team smiles back, gathers up their things, and heads out to make things happen.

But somehow, the process, or workflow, or structure, or team organization change doesn’t quite happen.

I’ve seen this happen enough that I now worry when I hear “we’re ready for change” or “we’re change-ready”. It’s a red flag that an organization or a leader is not willing to change.

It’s easy to say “we’re ready for change”. Having the potential to change is easy. Acknowledging that a change should be made is easy. Saying the words is easy.

It’s harder to make a change. Making a change takes energy. Energy, communication, persistence. The leader might need to talk to their peers or their leadership about what’s going to be different—to back up the team. People push back on changes and ask “what if” questions.

Change isn’t free or easy. Change takes work.

That’s why it’s so much easier to say “we’re ready for change” than to work toward a change.

In fact, staying “ready for change” is easy. If you never change, you’re always ready for a change.

To make this a bit more positive, the teams and companies I’ve been part of that have truly changed for the better didn’t constantly talk about “change” as a standalone goal. Change was simply a part of continuing to get better. We would notice something that wasn’t ideal, and we’d find a way to make it better, and we’d turn it into a habit, and later we’d notice something else that wasn’t ideal, and we’d continue the cycle of improvement.

The contrast between expecting change and performative declarations about change readiness expose major differences in the attitude of a company.

So positional leaders: the next time you’re presented with an opportunity to change, and you feel tempted to declare your readiness to change, in the hope that it’ll deflect from your apprehensions about this particular change, check yourself. “Let your yes be yes, and your no, no”, and either approve or deny the proposal.

And those of you that aren’t positional leaders: get a commitment when you ask for change. Don’t gather up your meeting materials, smile at your leader, and head back to work. Get into specifics. “Do we have your approval to require TPS reports starting Monday?” “When do you plan to meet with the VP to confirm we can modify the review process?”

The world around us is changing. To do more than slowly fall behind, you need to change. Declaring “we’re ready for change” just doesn’t quite have the same effect.