"This will hurt me, more than it will hurt you"...so said the reviewer!

The many skills of an organisational change practitioner include the ability to write a portfolio of documents from change plans to impact assessments. While some of these are working documents many are strategic and more often than not require stakeholder 'buy-in' as part of the engagement process.

Most often this documentation is presented after many hours of research and discovery sessions with stakeholders and other interested parties to the change. The total number of pages or 'weight' of the documents, often don't visually represent the total effort put into the task, as much information is disregarded or at least used as reference points for interventions later in the change project.

As a note here, I have for some time deliberately watered down all documents that I present in order to allow the reader to digest the information and understand the key message in the shortest time. I gave up producing weighty documents long ago and for my sins prefer, where possible, to use a PowerPoint document that delivers a concise and clear message.

However, I digress. The object of this article is to give some perspective to those of us who hold our breathe in trepidation as we await the return of our first draft with its caustic comments and editorial ripping. The document, that version 0.1 that we loved and cherished returns unrecognisable, leaving us feeling drained, with a diminished enthusiasm.

The first thing to say is that most often there is no right or wrong and the majority of reviewed documents are critiqued for their style rather than their content. As we all see different shades of a colour and interpret stories differently, so we read formal documents with varying viewpoints.

At the end of the day the World has not got as far as it has through agreement. All progress is actually the result of conflict and commitment. In order to improve we must see something different and challenge the process. In challenging, we work towards a new agreement and further progress, better than we imagined.

So if you are in the process of awaiting the return of your beautifully crafted document, do not fear the result. Work together with your sponsor to define the best strategy based on your original thoughts and their new contribution.