Navigating Uncertainty: Clarity in Construction Change Management

Mini Series Part 3:

Clarity doesn’t come before change—it’s built through it.

In this episode of Activating Curiosity™, Ryan Ware explores how construction leadership and change management in the AEC industry often stall because leaders wait for clarity that never arrives.

This conversation reframes a common belief: that teams need full clarity before taking action. Instead, Ryan highlights that clarity is personal, evolving, and developed through movement—not planning alone. 

Through the Five C’s of Change—Choice, Control, Clarity, Commitment, and Curiosity—this episode focuses on how clarity connects to trust, communication, and progress. When leaders expect certainty upfront, teams hesitate. When leaders normalize uncertainty, teams begin to move.

From project teams to organizational change, this episode explores how slowing down, asking better questions, and aligning on the next step—not the full path—creates momentum.

This isn’t about having all the answers—it’s about taking the next step.

What you’ll learn:

•  Why waiting for clarity delays progress 
•  How clarity is built through action, not planning 
•  The role of communication in aligning teams during change 
•  Why rushing change leads to resistance and failure 
•  How leaders create trust by normalizing uncertainty 

Who this is for:
Construction leaders, project managers, and AEC professionals focused on change management, leadership development, and navigating uncertainty.

Chapters

00:00 Reflection on Choice and Control
05:14 The Importance of Clarity in Change
16:13 Navigating the Journey of Change
30:34 Commitment to Change and Its Significance

Related episode

Mini-Series Part 2: Control 

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Helping construction leaders simplify change, strengthen trust, and move forward with clarity.

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Transcript

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Ryan 0:58

If you're a leader and you want to have a change done within your company and you've done that discovery, you have to make sure that your entire team knows that the clarity is going to come from the action steps and the movement through the change, that it will become more apparent to them. That all you can really give them is we're here, we all feel this pain and we recognize that it isn't what we want and where we want to be. But to get to that other side, we're going to have to go through some fall. We're going to have to go through some areas where things aren't lit as well as we would like them to be honest. And this is our final bonus episode and final episode of 2025, which is very hard to believe as we're heading into that new year. But for those that have been listening to the podcast, I appreciate your support. And if you are enjoying the podcast, I hope that you are following it and sharing it and looking for us on YouTube as well. I just want to say thanks to everyone who's been listening and looking forward to see where 2026 takes all of us in our journey as we start to begin to build stronger relationships with change. And that leads us into this bonus episode. And I want to do a little reflection and kind of step back to how we got to this point. We began the journey focused on change is an area that we all tend to struggle with. And a lot of times that means we don't understand what it means to ourselves, let alone anyone else within a team or a business and organization that we are part of. And change management and change within organizations, we've talked about that high percentage of failure to meet the objective, to meet the goals. It's a personal issue and kind of this universal issue as we're starting to look at, you know, our businesses, but also an entire industry that sometimes is seen as slow to change, slow to adopt, anything that looks like innovation or anything that looks new. So we started the journey talking about choice and what choice means to us personally, and what does it mean when we make first choice, first second choice? So, first choice, we've we've made the decision that we're going to make this change happen, versus someone else has made a choice that this change is going to happen. And how do we look at that? How do we feel about it? And whether we're going to become willing participants or begin to resist. The second area that we've been focusing on in the last episode was control. And we talked about control being an illusionist and that it didn't, it didn't really feel real to most of us because it's playing tricks. Like we hold on to things because we believe we're in 100% control at that moment. But that's not the reality. We're holding on and we're actually losing more control. And that control is actually done through our presence in the journey. And that's what is kind of getting us to that point of leadership, that we are present during the change, that we understand that holding on to things that maybe worked in past situations are now causing us more pain. And that's and that's really part of change in itself is that you sit in current state and you're you place a goal out in front of you. And it depends on how big that goal is, there is a a time lapse that has to happen to get you from current state to future. So when you first investigate that choice of do I want to make this change, you are then evaluating uh all of those things that are currently that believed to be in your control, and what you might in your mind think that you're losing to go to that next stage, to begin to take the journey of the change. So as humans, we need to evaluate our relationship with choice. We need to evaluate it with control. And by doing those, we are strengthening the foundation of our relationship with change. The third area that we need to investigate is the word clarity. And from a coaching perspective, the word clarity is this huge area of discovery. We have to go through a lot of questions in order to understand what clarity means from that individual. And the same is true for yourself. Like if you want to build a stronger relationship with clarity, you need to understand what it even means to you. So today we want to zero in on how our belief of clarity and that common statement that we hear in the industry, in our own lives, we probably said it, other family members saying it, like, well, I would make that change if I had 100% clarity. And it's got to make you wonder when you really think about it, is it's it's what does that actually mean? Think about what clarity means to you in this moment. Because we we talk about how clarity is well, you just put the protocols in place and you build a process and you know you set the expectations and you do all of those things. Businesses do that with change all the time. You do it in your personal life. You say, hey, I don't like this current state and I want to be there. So I'm gonna start the journey and I'm gonna this, I'm gonna make this happen, but we give up. We give up because other areas are faltering. It's not that we we don't want to see at what's on the other side of that change. It's that the clarity piece and the control piece and and and and and the first choice area versus second choice, like all of those things create emotions because clarity is personal, just like choice, just like control. So we can't put clarity as a universal solution. It you have to understand it for yourself if you're going to make a change that is impacting you, maybe a small amount of people, versus what does it mean for clarity if you are leading change within your organization or within an industry? So let's let's take a look at clarity from our personal aspect, because it isn't a universal thing. Clarity is, you know, I mentioned this before. It's like a Sasquatch. Like we think we've seen it, but we probably have never seen it throughout our lives. And I can pick on a couple areas of my own. I can think about when I had two, two young children, you know, everyone else is telling you, you know, there's all these books, all kinds of advice coming from every direction. But the reality was, like, no one had ever had my two sons before. So I could either think that there was a roadmap and the actual game plan, but I would have missed something by following advice of others. I would have tried to apply things that maybe didn't meet the situation, didn't meet the need of what it was, you know, that my children actually needed and were going to become. So, you know, clarity when it relates to change or trying something new that you've never done before, you got to start to ask yourself those questions. Like, what does clarity mean to me? And how much information do I actually need? Do I need 100%? And what does that look like? You know, what are the steps that have to be taken? And if you think, like, okay, I'm going to start going to the gym. I want to exercise more. That's we're heading into the new year, and that's like a very common thing that people think about. I want to lose weight. I'm I want to become more active. All right, I'll get a gym membership, I'll pay for for a whole year. That'll hold me accountable because it's coming out of the checking account. Yet if you look at most of the fitness industry, their money is made at the first half of the year. Most people are gone out of the gym within three months. Because while the long-term goal was there, it was the daily and weekly clarity of what you were going to be doing that day. It wasn't the clarity of the whole year. It was just keeping it clear on what it was going to feel like by doing those exercises daily to weekly, and putting a game plan together in a much smaller uh viewpoint versus the full path. So if we don't go through that time to discover, not just for ourselves, like what does this change actually mean? And then you look inside your business and you say, okay, I feel, I feel the change needs this much clarity. What is everyone else thinking? Because they're not going to be the same, because it's personal. And I think a lot of times what happens with clarity is that it's the boss said, Does that make sense? Are we all aligned? And then heads to the office, and most people didn't want to speak up. And if they did speak up, like they still leave the room confused. And you can think about all these things even on a project standpoint, like when people aren't aligned on the message. And while communication within businesses is very much a critical component of change management, it's that we're having the communication at a point in time where we didn't do any beginning discovery to better understand our individuals and our team and how they feel about change and how they start to think about what clarity actually means. How much clarity do they need as a unit? And we, as humans, again, going back to that, I would do it if I had 100% clarity. I would take those steps. We would make that change, we would use that method of construction. If you give us data and you show us, like, hey, it's worked elsewhere. Well, guess what? You're not them. So even with that data, situations are going to change. It doesn't mean that it's going to go exactly as planned. So what happens when it doesn't? How are you going to react to that? And I think a lot of times, like, you know, when you're a freshman at university or college, like you didn't rush through to your senior year. The reality of the clarity of this is how I'm starting on day one. I want this degree. It's it's where I want to have a focus area for my career. The journey through freshman year, sophomore, junior, all the way to senior and graduation, that journey that you're experiencing, like that's the change. Know that it's you got to go this many courses and you got to do this many credits, but you don't know what that class is going to be like. You don't know what the professor's going to be like. You don't know how you're going to feel. You don't know what the rest of the workload's going to be. Like all of those things are unknown. But the journey and the experience of going through the trainings and the and the classes and the education piece of it, like that's the beautiful part of change. You wouldn't want to rush through that. But when we get into businesses, like we want to start with, hey, we communicated, like, we're here, we want to get to there. We map out clarity that doesn't answer all of the questions that everybody wants. We end up into a situation somewhere down the line, and we give up. Half the team gives up, the other team's pushing because not everybody understands the message, the goal. But it's because some people think I've I I gotta know exactly how this is gonna go. And if I don't, I'm not going to be a willing participant. And well, 100% clarity, it will never happen. Because it's in most cases new territory. It's something you've never seen. It's part of life you've never experienced. And the reason I'm saying all that is that I think I think a lot of times in organizations, it's we don't have time or we feel we don't have time. So we do not spend the necessary time to go through that discovery piece. Spend time as a team and as a unit to to think about like, okay, here is what we're feeling. Here is all of the challenges that we're facing and the problems that we're facing, and in defining all of those and getting to the root problem and then coming up with a solution. A lot of times what we do is the solution, someone comes up with it without getting enough feedback, without enough discovery. So as you start the journey, there's different ideas of the clarity because there's this is the goal that one person wants versus the actual problems that are happening. So you're not clear even as you begin the journey of the person leading it, because you haven't aligned or you haven't gone through that discovery, because you want to rush through it. And by rushing through it, like no one's no one's having the experience. No one's gaining any more insight by you know trying new things. But one of the real dangers of change within our life as individuals as well as organizations is that rushing through period. It's that we think that change is a one-time event. And it's not. Change is change is an experience, change is a journey. And in order to get it to stick, like you can't rush it. And where clarity comes in to this is that you set that expectation at the beginning. If you're a leader and you want to have a change done within your company, and you've done that discovery and you've decided like these are the problems that we're having, and that's the solutions that we need to put in place because that is her end goal. You have to make sure that your entire team knows that the clarity is going to come from the action steps and the movement through the change, that it will become more apparent to them. That all you can really give them is we're here, we all feel this pain, and we recognize that it isn't what we want and where we want to be. But to get to that other side, we're going to have to go through some fog. We're going to have to go through some areas where things aren't lit as well as we would like them to be. So we need to slow down in those areas. We need to understand how we're feeling about them and going through them, but we need to understand like that moment, those areas of fog and darkness, they are about exploration. They are about discovery. They are about trying to find out like these new things that we're learning, these new tasks that we're taking on, this new technology or method of construction or or solution that we're putting into place, like this is where we're growing. This is where we're learning. This is where we're developing. And that is setting a foundation to get the change to stick. Because when it feels uncomfortable, when it feels new and it feels dark and a little foggy, speeding up through those areas, like that's where accidents happen. That's where we feel like, hey, I messed up and well, this didn't work because I didn't know what I was doing. But if you look at it from a standpoint of I'm going to slow down in this area, we all are going to slow down in this area. We will take smaller steps. We will see more clearly as we're working through it. We will connect more to this new area. We will understand and learn from those things that we get wrong. And we will build a better understanding of what it will take next time. That's where you're gaining clarity. Because if you've never been to a gym, as the example I gave in a personal life, that first time is not going to feel all that comfortable. Maybe even not after the first week. There's equipment that you just you don't know how to use yet. There's muscles that you haven't, you know, haven't worked out in a while. So it's it's really the same thing. It's it's this you you've not done it, you're reintroducing something. So you can't just rush through it. You can't just go in and lift every weight up and do every exercise and expect it to be done. It's going to take time. It's going to take you understanding that the clarity comes by the actions. The clarity of moving through new territory, foggy area, uh a non-lit area, you slow down. You don't speed up. If you're doing this personally or you're doing this with a team, you have to understand at each point in time how you're feeling. Like, name it. If you're having fear because you can't see or this didn't work, you're talking about it. You're talking through all of these things as a team. So when we think back to this area of, hey, I would do that if I had 100% clarity, whether, again, it's personal or as a team, once you've evaluated what clarity means to yourself and to others, then you can begin to talk a little deeper about that level of clarity that it's going to take to take the first step. Like we only need as a group, we only need clarity for that first step. So what is that going to take? What does that look like? And you begin to build trust. You build trust in your yourself and your ability to take on something that you've never done. You're building trust as a team because now you're you're talking through it. That communication level is increasing. Everyone is present during it. They've understand that it wasn't a first choice for them, but but the second choice of being involved and a willing participant, the buy-in level is increasing. And they they recognize that the value of working through this is greater than the current state because they're they're not holding on to this belief of that 100% clarity is all there is. So therefore, you know, if I can't have the 100% clarity, I can't control everything, and I didn't make the choice, like I'm just gonna sit over here and do nothing. But by talking about each of these things, by realizing that that clarity is only coming by trying something. Because you don't know if you are capable of it until you step into it. And our minds are also this trap that will get you to believe that you're incapable of doing something. It'll create those obstacles, it'll it'll create the limiting beliefs, and then you'll put it into a vicious cycle of like, nah, we're just not gonna change. Well, why not? Because the last one didn't go well. What about the last change didn't go well? And keep asking more questions about the last change. Try to find out, like, were we not aligned in the last change? Did we not do enough discovery? Did we rush through it too quickly? Maybe it was the wrong answer. Maybe the problems that we thought we had weren't even the problems that we were trying to solve. But just laying into the area of, hey, we just aren't good at change, so therefore we're not going to do it. You're you're not giving yourself, you know, the opportunity to step back and begin to understand your relationship with change as it relates to choice and control and this area of clarity that we're talking about. Because again, clarity is an enormous word. Every client that comes in and says, I just want to get clarity, what does that mean? What does that mean to you? Because I I don't know what 100% clarity looks like even for myself until I begin to explore it. And when will I take that first step? Like, well, how much information do I need to take the first action? But I can make the fog less dense by having action steps, by having smaller incremental viewpoints of what I need to achieve to get to the next point of clarity, not to see all the way through it. Because that middle area, that area of change that we talked about, that exploration and discovery and learning, like that's the most beautiful part of change. That is where you're finding something greater than you had in the past. And if you again skip it because you don't have 100% clarity, if you rush through it because you just want the change to happen, you're missing something. You're missing that experience. But we we can't get there if we're not willing to pause to understand our relationship with change and others and their relationship with change. And it can feel like a big task. And people may say, hey, it's a waste of time, but we're just not good at it. Or we just don't want to put change into place because we're too busy, so we'll just keep feeling the pain that we're feeling on a daily basis because we can't control everything, so therefore we're not gonna do it and we don't have clarity, so nothing changes, everything stays the same. And that's not a good answer for anyone, within the business, for yourself, for the industry, like we have to be willing to explore this relationship. Why is it a relationship? Well, what relationship works well when it's one-sided? So if we believe that a change is happening to us, then it's one-sided. You're not the willing participant that is needed. And but when you're exploring these first three steps as it relates to strengthening that relationship with change, you're now an active participant in the relationship. You are identifying those things that you need to begin the journey because those areas are just the beginning. And in order to make it all the way to the other side of that change, you need commitment. And commitment is the next area of exploration. Commitment is it is where we fall apart. It is why we quit the gym. It is why we don't follow through on the change. It is why a lot of change implementations fail in businesses or initiatives, don't meet the goals because not everybody's has the same level of commitment to the change. And that's because they haven't understood their relationship around choice and their relationship around control, and they haven't understood what clarity means to themselves and what it means to others. And when those things aren't aligned internally and they're not aligned within your team or business and group, yeah, you won't stay committed. That's just how we is how we function as humans. Because we want to go back to the tried and the true. We want to go back to what seemed easier before, even if the current pain can be removed, lowered, or you know, completely addressed in the way we want it to by making the change. So we we are human and I recognize that. But I recognize an opportunity. I recognize an opportunity of trying to help others begin this exploration piece of their relationship with change by zeroing in on the choice and the control and the clarity. And in the next episode, we'll explore commitment. And how do we start to think about commitment in our own lives and in our teams? And this is where that reflection I was talking about earlier of how did the last change go for yourself? How did the last change go for the team? And do that discovery as well before you try to rush through it. So I hope this mini-series is again just sparking some curiosity around change in your own life and within your business and team, because we can't continue to go on within the industry as a whole, believing that we're not going to change, or that solutions just don't work, or technology can't work, or methodologies can't work, because we have to have some agency in all of this. We have to take ownership in this relationship that we have with change. And we need to make sure it's not one-sided. And that is the way that we can move forward. I had mentioned before that things were going to change in 2026. And I'm excited about what is currently kind of in the plan for all the podcasts as we head into the new year. Um, the goal is again to have two guests released on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month. So uh an additional guest each month through 2026 with a bonus episode dropping on a third Thursday. That'll give us more opportunity to think about things that are kind of top of mind and bring in mini-series like this. So I know it is the holiday season. We're heading into the new year in a few days, but I'm grateful again to all of you who have listened, who have given me feedback on the podcast, or given me things that would be helpful for you and for others. So until next time, I hope you stay well. I hope you continue to find those things that that excite you that you want to explore more. And I hope you continue to activate your curiosity as well as curiosity within the curious.