Avoiding Ambushes: Leading Change Effectively

In private equity-backed businesses, change isn’t just a part of the job — it is the job. Delivering a value creation plan inevitably requires rapid evolution: new systems, restructured teams, revised strategies, and different ways of working. The challenge isn’t whether change is necessary — it’s how to execute it in a way that sticks.

And yet, even the most well-intentioned changes often run into the same problem: they surprise people.

When I served in the Royal Marines, we were taught the Principles of Warfare — a set of enduring concepts designed to help us win in conditions of uncertainty and danger. One of the most powerful was the principle of Surprise, defined as “the consequence of shock and confusion induced by the deliberate or incidental introduction of the unexpected.”

Surprise, in this context, is a weapon.

You want to use it against your enemy to confuse them, slow down their pace of decision-making and reduce their ability to react to changing circumstances.

To illustrate the point, consider Operation Bodyguard, the elaborate deception campaign run by the Allies in the lead-up to D-Day. The objective was simple: mislead the German High Command into believing the invasion would happen at Calais, not Normandy. They created entire phantom armies, sent misleading radio signals, deployed double agents, and even floated inflatable tanks across the Channel. The result? The Germans were disoriented, uncertain, and unprepared for the real invasion.

Surprise gave the Allies a critical advantage.

Now, let’s bring this back to business.

Imagine you’ve just informed your sales team that their commission structure is being overhauled. We are going to reward people for how people behave not just on the results they deliver. The senior team has been working on it for weeks — maybe months — but this is the first time your people are hearing about it.

They’re surprised.

And just like in a military context, surprise creates confusion. People freeze. They speculate. “Why is this happening?” “Wasn’t what we were doing working?” They haven’t been part of the decision-making process so to them, the decision doesn’t make sense because it lacks the context in which it was made.

Momentum slows. Instead of leaning into the change, people pull away from it. And now you need to spend more energy winning hearts and minds than you did actually designing the change in the first place.

In other words, you ambushed your own team.

The irony is that most leaders don’t intend to do this. They’re trying to move fast. They assume that if the plan is good, people will get behind it. But in practice, it rarely works that way — not because the plan is flawed, but because the rollout is.

Here’s the key: minimise surprise.

When people know that change is coming, they’re much more likely to engage with it. That doesn’t mean sending out a long-winded internal memo or calling a town hall two weeks in advance. It means deliberately socialising the idea.

This can be as simple as saying, “We’ve been thinking about adjusting our sales process to improve margin — I’d love your perspective on what’s working and what isn’t.” Or, “I’ve noticed a lot of friction between teams — what do you think we could do to make collaboration easier?”

When you float ideas early, you achieve three things:

1. You surface resistance early – giving you time to address it while it’s still manageable.

2. You get a feel for energy and alignment – understanding whether this is a gentle pivot or an uphill push.

3. You invite people into the process – which increases ownership and speed of adoption. When people feel part of the making process, execution becomes quicker.

That’s not to say you’re asking for permission. You’re reading the terrain. In military terms, you’re conducting reconnaissance. You’re gathering intelligence on the emotional and cultural landscape, so that when the moment comes to act, you’re not stepping into an ambush of your own making.

Change isn’t easy. But it becomes a lot harder when you confuse your team in the process.

So, the next time you’re preparing for a major change, ask yourself: “Am I setting up my team to succeed — or am I ambushing them?”

Because in PE-backed businesses, success depends not just on strategy, but on execution — and execution depends on people who aren’t caught off guard.