As Junior Consultants working at Lean Tree, we’ve already gained a lot of exposure to business change at relatively early stages of our careers. We recognise change management is paramount to realising the benefits of digital transformation and see the clear need to continuously develop our understanding to ensure we offer effective support to our clients during engagements. 
  
Over the past 2 years we’ve been able to get hands on experience alongside our textbook learning. This has highlighted the differences between theory and reality in fast paced business change. While the textbook frameworks offer structured approaches to managing change, real-world application is often far messier. 

Theory vs Reality 

We have observed the reality of change for our clients and how this can look vastly different from the approaches described in business texts which often present boiler plate solutions, albeit based on great frameworks, that can be tricky to apply within a client’s existing culture and ways of working when delivering at pace.  
  
In the workplace, we've seen how business change is rarely linear: competing priorities, stakeholder resistance, evolving goals, and time constraints regularly challenge even the best-laid plans. We’ve experienced well-structured change initiatives falter due to unclear communication and lack of engagement at key levels, and witnessed the ways in which informal influence, team culture, and frontline adaptability can make or break a transformation. In short, theory gives us a foundation, but it's the day-to-day realities, such as navigating ambiguity, aligning people, and adapting quickly, that define successful change on the ground.  

Applying This in Practice 

This realisation has encouraged us to seek a pick and mix approach, applying best practice wherever possible, and raising and mitigating risks in the gaps.   
   
A crucial part of our development as Junior Consultants has come from our weekly Book Club sessions where we gained a wider context for our learning through related reading. 
  
In “Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time” Jeff Sutherland highlighted both the futility of blame, suggesting rooting out bad systems rather than bad people, and a common struggle of daily stand-ups, that they morph into individual reports rather than focusing on blockers to achieving the sprint goal and how to remove them. We learned to “Plan Reality, Not Fantasy”, as Scrum advocates limiting time spent on creating robust, inflexible plans before any work has been done to avoid plans which describe a fictional reality.   
  
Simon Sinek’s “Together Is Better” used a playful school playground metaphor to emphasise the importance of business change in a leadership context, aiming to remove gossip, blame-shifting, and self-interest, as working teams need to be aligned with a ‘shared vision’ and foster ‘trust and cooperation’ to deliver successfully.    
  
How can you combat these issues in delivery when business teams are heads down, focused on meeting milestones, and often not in the headspace to think about longer term shifts to ways of working? In reality, it’s not always possible. Theoretically these practices should embed seamlessly; in practice, pace, pressure, and priorities can make it difficult to step back and challenge established norms. It won’t always be possible to pause and rebuild the plane mid-flight, and expecting otherwise can set teams up for frustration.   
  
We often find ourselves balancing what should happen with what can actually happen. The value of best practice and the importance of pragmatism when working at pace. Crucially, both perspectives are needed for a strong foundation in each new project, programme or challenge we take on.

Real-World Value 

Ultimately, its through these real-world experience that we're helping to deliver our greatest value. Not just by reinforcing what we’ve learned from textbooks, but by challenging it. It’s in navigating the gaps between theory and reality that we’ve learned the most, not only about transformation itself, but about what it means to support and deliver it well. Shaping how we approach ambiguity, communicate with empathy, and recognise where to flex rather than force as we continue to develop as consultants.