My husband built me an app that I didn't ask for.

For years, I tracked my workouts in a Google spreadsheet. It made no sense to anyone but me. It was extremely basic and wasn't the prettiest. But it was mine. I knew exactly where everything lived.

So he did what any well-meaning, technical spouse would do: he built me something better (in his eyes). Cleaner. Faster. It did everything the spreadsheet did and a dozen things it couldn’t.

I absolutely hated it.

I didn’t want to open it. I found reasons to go back to the spreadsheet “just this once.” I was annoyed that the fancy built in timer didn't know to restart when I was doing my next set. Never mind that the new thing was objectively better, or that the person asking me to change was someone I trust completely. I did not want to change.

Today? I use the app every single time I work out. But that awkward, grumpy stretch in the middle taught me something I already knew from years of operations work and apparently needed to feel for myself:

Change is hard. Even good change. Even when it makes your life easier. Even when you know better.

Now imagine asking your team to do it. Not on a quiet week with nothing else going on, but while they're delivering client work, hitting deadlines, and keeping the plane in the air. Ya know, simply swap out the engine mid-flight.

Why Change Is So Hard (Even When It’s Better)

When agency owners tell me “my team is resisting the new process,” they usually say it like it’s a character flaw. But it isn't, it’s just how people work. A few things are happening under the surface:

• You’re asking experts to become beginners. Your senior PM was fast in the old tool. In the new one, she’s slow and making mistakes in front of the team. Nobody enjoys that.

• They weren't in the room when it was decided. You spent weeks working through the problem. They got the conclusion in ten minutes and were asked to be on board with it.

• They pay this week for a benefit they get next quarter. The slowdown is real and it starts immediately. The payoff is months out, and right now they only have your word that it's coming.

Whether it’s a new project management tool, a new time tracking requirement, or a new client onboarding process, this is what you’re up against. And that’s the easy kind of change.

The Hardest Thing to Change Is Someone’s Role

Tools are things. Roles are identity.

In all my years of working with agencies, the changes that get stuck the longest are never about tools or process. They’re about the people: promoting a great designer into a lead role, moving the owner out of day-to-day delivery, splitting account management from project management, or hiring someone above a person who used to report straight to you.

Here’s why that’s so monumental. When you change someone’s role, you’re changing:

• What they’re good at. The thing that made them valuable yesterday may not be the thing you need from them tomorrow.

• How they see themselves. “I’m the person who makes the work great” is a very different identity than “I’m the person who builds the systems to deliver great work."

• Who they sit with in the room. Yesterday they were part of the team. Today they're at the leadership table, and the peers they used to grab lunch with are people they manage.

And the owner isn’t exempt. Some of the hardest role changes I’ve ever facilitated were helping founders step out of client work. They wanted to work on the business instead of in it. Yet, they still went back to the spreadsheet, so to speak, every chance they got.

If you’re in the middle of restructuring, start with defining your agency’s organizational structure so every role change has a home.

How to Actually Manage Change

You can't make change painless. You can make it a whole lot less painful. Here's the approach I use with agencies:

Step #1: Start With the Why (and the What's-in-It-for-Them)

I knew my spreadsheet was limited. What I didn't have was a reason strong enough to sit through the awkward phase. Your team needs the business reason ("we can't see project margins until it's too late") and the personal one ("margin is what pays for raises, better tools, and not working weekends"). If you can't articulate both, you aren't ready to roll it out.

Step #2: Give It an Owner

Every change needs a point person who is accountable for making it stick, not just announcing it. This is the person who answers questions, collects feedback, and notices when people are quietly slipping back into the old way. (Yes, I've written about this before, because it matters every single time.) Here's my full guide to rolling out a new tool.

Step #3: Invite the Naysayers

You already know who they are. The person who will have three objections before you finish explaining, and the one who has watched rollouts like this come and go.

Bring them in before you announce anything. Not to be talked into it, but to help shape it. Ask what they think will break, and change the plan when they're right.

Their resistance usually has real information in it. They're the ones living in the process, so they know where it falls apart. And a critic who helped shape the plan will defend it to the rest of the team far more convincingly than you ever could.

Step #4: Start Small and Expect the Dip

Productivity goes down before it goes up. That's not a sign the change is failing; it's a sign you're doing it. So make the dip small. Don't migrate everything on a Monday. Pick one project, one team, or one workflow and run it the new way for two weeks. Early wins build the confidence that makes the bigger rollout possible.

And use some judgment about timing. Don't restructure a team in the middle of your busiest quarter, and don't judge the results in week two.

Step #5: Retire the Old Way, With a Date

As long as the spreadsheet exists, someone will use it. Announce the date the old process officially ends, communicate it more times than feels necessary, and then actually turn it off. No exceptions, no "just this once."

Step #6: It's Not Done When You Think It's Done

Launch day is the middle of the project, not the end of it. Put check-ins on the calendar for 30, 60, and 90 days out, and keep asking the questions nobody volunteers answers to. Is this actually better than what we had, or have we just gotten used to it? Are questions going unanswered? Is anyone quietly miserable?

What you hear usually means the change needs adjusting, not abandoning. The version you roll out is almost never the version you keep, and the agencies that get this right are still refining six months later.

Where This Usually Goes Sideways

I've watched well-intentioned changes fall apart for the same handful of reasons. Keep an eye out for these:

• Changing everything at once. New tool, new roles, and a new process in the same month means none of them stick.

• Quietly undoing it yourself. If you keep answering the questions your new lead is supposed to answer, the team will keep coming to you. You have to let it be a little messy.

• Reading friction as failure. The first few weeks are supposed to be bumpy. If you reverse course the moment someone pushes back, you'll never make it through the awkward phase of anything.

• No definition of success. If you can't say what "this worked" looks like, you'll still be arguing about it a year from now. Pick a number or a behavior, and a date.

• Forgetting the documentation. The new way has to be written down, or the old way comes back the first time someone new joins and asks how we do this.

Change Is Uncomfortable. That Doesn’t Mean It’s Wrong.

I still think about those first few weeks with the app. All of my resistance was real, and none of it was a reason not to change. The discomfort was the price of getting somewhere better.

That’s what I want you to hold onto the next time your team pushes back or struggles adopting a new tool, a new process, or a new role. Don’t take it as a verdict. Take it as information. Then give people a reason, a plan, an owner, and enough time to get through the dip.

They’ll get there. And, like me, they probably won’t want to go back.

What’s the change your agency has been putting off? I’d love to hear what’s holding it up.