By Cheryl Hanna, Senior Network & Security Engineer, ACCP, ACMP —

You logged out of work last night and shut down your trusty laptop. Everything worked. This morning? Your authenticator app won’t let you in.

Sound familiar? You’re doing exactly what you did yesterday. Same boot up process. Same username and password. Same coffee mug in hand. And yet — locked out. Your first instinct: Is it just me? Should I reboot? Should I call IT? Should I get a second coffee and hope for the best?

You spend the next 20 minutes troubleshooting something that worked perfectly fine 14 hours ago. Maybe you get back in. Maybe you’re still waiting for IT to call you back. Either way, you’ve already lost half a productive hour — and you haven’t even started your actual work yet.

This is more expensive than it looks.

We tend to think of these moments as minor annoyances. A blip. A brief interruption before the real day begins. But when you step back and look at the full picture, the cost adds up fast. Think about what’s actually happening in your organization when IT instability becomes a recurring theme. Your team members aren’t just losing 20 minutes here and there — they’re losing trust.

Every time someone can’t log in, can’t access a file, or can’t use a tool they rely on to do their job, a small deposit gets made into what I call the “IT frustration account.” And that account compounds. Employees start to work around systems they don’t trust. They save files locally instead of in shared drives. They avoid using the new tool IT rolled out because “it probably won’t work tomorrow anyway.” They stop reporting issues because “IT never fixes it fast enough.”

Quietly, the technology investment your organization made stops delivering its full value — not because the tech is bad, but because the trust is gone. Leadership feels it too, even if they can’t always name it. Productivity dips. Deadlines slip. Teams seem resistant to new technology initiatives. And the frustrating irony? The IT team is often working incredibly hard behind the scenes — patching, updating, securing — doing all the right things technically. The problem isn’t the work. It’s the silence around the work.

Why IT teams skip the process (and why it always backfires)

Here’s the thing: I get it. I’ve worked among and alongside IT teams long enough to understand the temptation. You have a minor patch to push. It’s low risk. It’ll take 15 minutes. If you do it after hours, no one will even notice and you won’t have to fill out a change request, schedule a maintenance window, or send a notification email that nobody reads anyway. Just get it done and move on.

The problem is that “minor” is relative, and “no one will notice” is almost never true. Someone always notices. It’s the sales rep who works late. The executive who logs in from a different time zone. The automated process that runs at midnight and suddenly can’t connect to the database that got patched. And now instead of a planned 15-minute update, you have an unplanned outage at 7am with no documentation, no rollback plan, and a help desk phone that won’t stop ringing.

What good change management looks like

I want to be clear about something: a good change management process is not about adding red tape. It’s not about slowing IT down or burying your team in paperwork. Done right, it’s the thing that gives IT teams more freedom — because when people trust the process, they trust the outcomes. Here’s what I recommend to the organizations I work with:

1. Define what counts as a “change.”

Not every action needs a formal process, but your team should agree on a threshold. A security patch to a production server? Yes. Restarting a printer? Probably not. When everyone has a shared definition, the right work gets the right level of attention.

2. Create a simple change request template.

It doesn’t need to be complicated. What’s changing, why, when, what’s the risk, and what’s the rollback plan if something goes wrong. Five fields. Fifteen minutes. That documentation becomes invaluable when something unexpected happens at 6am.

3. Establish a standard maintenance window.

Pick recurring windows — say, Tuesday nights between 10pm and 2am — when routine changes happen. Business teams learn to expect that updates may occur during those windows. IT has protected time to do the work. Everyone knows the rhythm.

4. Communicate before and after every change.

This is the part most teams skip, and it’s the most important. A brief heads-up email or Slack message before a maintenance window — and a quick “all clear” or “here’s what to watch for” message after — does more for IT’s reputation than almost anything else. It signals professionalism. It signals accountability. And it gives business teams the information they need to plan around potential disruptions.

5. Review and learn when things go sideways.

Changes don’t always go as planned. That’s okay. What separates mature IT organizations from reactive ones is what happens next. A short post-incident review — what happened, what we learned, what we’re doing differently — builds credibility even out of failure.

The trust dividend

When you put a consistent change management process in place, something shifts. Business teams stop being surprised by outages. They start to see IT as a partner in planning rather than a source of unpredictable disruption. They provide input into maintenance windows. They help test changes before they go live. They advocate for IT investments because they understand the value. That’s not a technical outcome. That’s a cultural one. And it starts with communication. 

The technology in your organization is never going to be perfect. Updates will sometimes cause unexpected issues. Systems will occasionally behave in ways nobody predicted. That’s the nature of complex, interdependent environments. But when your teams trust that IT is communicating openly, documenting changes, and following a repeatable process — the occasional hiccup doesn’t erode confidence. Instead, confidence is reinforced, because people can see the system working even when things go wrong.

If your colleagues are starting their day wondering what broke — and your IT team is stuck reacting instead of leading — change management isn’t a “nice to have.” It’s your fastest path to restoring trust and control. The investment is minimal, but the payoff is immediate: fewer surprises, smoother operations, and a team that’s trusted instead of second-guessed. In my experience, once you start putting structure around change, within 60 days you’ll feel the shift not just in systems, but in how your organization works together.

About the Author

Cheryl Hanna is an accomplished IT expert in secure wired and wireless networks. With more than 14 years of experience in IT, including experience with network design, configuration, monitoring and troubleshooting, she has been integral in the success of numerous  infrastructure deployments and managed services engagements with Structured’s customers. As an Aruba Certified Mobility Professional and an Aruba Certified ClearPass Professional, Cheryl has distinguished herself as a go-to expert in secure wired and wireless networking, including extensive experience with AAA frameworks using RADIUS and TACACS+.