Adapting to Change at Work: What Public Works Taught Me About Plans That Fall Apart

linnearader
Aug 5
5 min read

You make the plan. You walk out the door ready to execute it. And within an hour, something happens that throws the whole thing off course.

If that sentence made you nod, you have probably worked in public works. But honestly, it doesn't matter what field you're in. Plans falling apart is not a public works problem. It's a work problem. It's a life problem. The only difference is how often you have to face it and how quickly you have to adjust.

Adapting to change isn't fun...but it's part of life.

What Adapting to Change at Work Really Looks Like

In the field, this happens daily. You plan how a project will go, you head out, you get ready to do the work, and a surprise throws you off base. If you step back, reset, and truly take it in, you'll often see that the adaptation ends up better than the original plan.

Here's a recent example. A team member resigned. She got married, moved away, and is living her best life, which is genuinely wonderful for her. But it left me with a vacancy, and filling any position is a challenge. You can be as careful as possible interviewing, selecting, and hiring, and you still never really know how it's going to go.

With the vacancy looming, I thought of one of our summer help employees who wasn't quite sure of their future plans, and I asked if they were interested in filling in and potentially taking the position permanently. After a day, they were honest and said it wasn't the right fit for them. No harm, no foul. I appreciated the honesty.

A week or so later, that same person was working out on the road with a returning summer help employee and mentioned what they had tried. That returning summer help employee ended up becoming the intern I still rave about today. The plan didn't go how I expected it to at first, but the outcome was outstanding.

"The plan didn't go how I expected it to at first, but the outcome was outstanding."

The List Never Takes Long to Build

The quick and dirty list of changes that can happen at the drop of a hat.

Honestly, situations like this happen so regularly that I have a hard time remembering them individually. They're standard occurrences at this point, so they don't even frustrate me anymore. Adapting on the fly is just part of the job.

The equipment breaks down. An entire crew suddenly needs to be re-routed. The material you ordered doesn't show up, so a full day turns into a partial one. You've got a void under a road surface that's growing by the day in the middle of your busiest season. You get four FOIA requests in one day and your entire week's plans go sideways. You open a road and find something you never expected, which means different materials, more people, and a longer closure than residents were told to expect. A resident loses their mind on a job site and threatens your staff.

That list didn't take me three minutes to think of, and every item on it is real. Thinking on the fly, planning on the fly, and coming up with different plans are simply part of leading in this kind of work.

You Can Get Mad, or You Can Get Moving

You can get mad. You can stomp your feet. You can get angry. None of it changes a thing. Instead, you can take a breath, think, ask your team for insight, and make a new plan.

"You can get mad. You can stomp your feet. You can get angry. None of it changes a thing."

Every single one of these situations may uncover a better way to do things. A different approach. A reason things happened that leads to a new idea. The outcome may end up vastly improved from what it could have been, even if you never see it in the moment.

That's really the hardest part. You can't always see the good while you're living through the frustrating middle of it. The void under the road, the furious resident, the broken equipment, none of it feels like an opportunity when it's happening. It just feels like your day, your week, or your project got harder. But if you can train yourself to pause instead of react, you give the better outcome room to show up.

Practicing the Pause

This is a skill, not a personality trait. You can practice it. You can get better at it. And the more you do, the less these curveballs will actually stress you out, even when they're showing up daily.

Here's the honest part. In the moment, these situations are frustrating. It's easy to get angry, get agitated, feel your patience run out. If you need to feel that for a minute, let yourself. Just find somewhere to do it that doesn't land on your team.

When I need a minute, I let myself feel that frustration first instead of pushing past it. I vent for a minute or two. Then I take some breaths. I calm down, and I get to work. It's time for a new plan.

"I vent for a minute or two. Then I take some breaths. I calm down, and I get to work."

That small reset matters more than people think. You're not suppressing the frustration, you're just not letting it make the next decision for you. Once the initial heat passes, you're in a much better position to actually think, to ask your team what they're seeing, and to build the plan that works instead of the plan that was just convenient to be mad about.

Next time a plan falls apart on you, whether it's a crew that needs re-routing or a hire that doesn't work out the way you expected, try asking yourself one question once you've had your minute: what might this be opening up that the original plan couldn't have?

You may not know the answer right away. Sometimes you won't know it for weeks. Sometimes, like the intern story above, you won't connect the dots until months later and realize how much better things turned out than you originally planned.

So here's what I'd ask you to sit with this week. Think back to the last time a plan at work completely fell apart on you. Not a minor hiccup, a real derailment. What did you do in that first frustrated moment? And looking back now, is there any chance the outcome ended up better, or at least different in a way you couldn't have predicted?

You don't have to have a tidy answer. Just notice the pattern. The more you notice it, the easier it gets to trust the process the next time your plans fall apart, because they will. That's the job. That's leadership. And that's a skill worth practicing on purpose.

As always, carry social kindness with you everywhere you go. The world needs you and your positive mindset!