Change Makers: A Closer Look at the Savills Change Management Team with Allison Hochberg

A team is like a mosaic. Each piece is different but brings an essential addition to the whole picture. The Savills Change Management team is a group of individuals with unique experience and credentials. Together, they bring their clients a well-rounded perspective on navigating and implementing change. Learn more about our team and the Savills approach to change management in our series, Change Makers.

Allison Hochberg: Understanding the Human Side of Organizational Change

Allison Hochberg, Associate Director with Savills Change Management team, has helped a wide variety of corporate clients manage significant transitions. But she is the first to admit that change doesn’t always sit well with her.

“I personally have a very hard time with transition,” she said. “There's anxiety leading up to that change, and that's a normal human reaction. I believe it can be mitigated by gaining a sense of control or having a plan. And that is essentially what we do in change management.”

Understanding people’s psychological needs is foundational to Allison’s concept of managing change. Treating change as a human experience that can be laden with fear, hope, discomfort, anticipation, and more can enable more meaningful engagement with stakeholders and better success in driving transformation.

Allison’s approach to change management is rooted in the lessons she has gathered from her diverse and nonlinear career and educational path. Each step has helped her hone and adopt key guiding principles in managing organizational change: flexible communication, empathy, and rigorous data-gathering.

The importance of communication style

Majoring in sociology as an undergrad, Allison’s curiosity about human behavior has always driven some aspects of her career journey. She started as a nursery school teacher and eventually taught English in Thailand, learning important lessons about communication and adaptability in both roles. Working with people of diverse ages and cultural backgrounds shaped how Alli collaborates with clients today.

“The number one thing I learned [from teaching] was patience. There’s a level of communicating and then re-communicating and adjusting your communication style to fit the audience,” she said. “If a client is resistant to my feedback or recommendations, instead of getting frustrated, I’ll figure out how I can communicate it in a different way.”

Emotional intelligence (EQ) is a prerequisite to good communication, an attribute Allison is known to bring to her teams. She believes EQ is crucial in successfully managing organizational change. For Alli, EQ means picking up on nonverbal cues, meaningfully engaging with stakeholders, and comprehending needs and motivations at all levels in an organization. It also means knowing when to steer and when to take her foot off the gas.

“Bringing stakeholders together in the spirit of collaboration is part of my values as a change manager,” she said. “It’s not about me pushing an agenda but aligning with the client’s priorities and giving them guidance where there might be a more efficient way.”

The psychology of a workplace

Allison’s graduate studies in Industrial and Organizational Psychology through the Harvard Extension School have enriched her practice of managing change. Additional Organizational and Human Behavior certifications have expanded her understanding of what drives how people think and act in the workplace.

“Employees and their employer have different goals – they overlap but are not the same. They also hold different levels of control,” she explained. As an example, she cites the need to understand what standards of success C-suite members are being held to while empathizing with how employees might react to the possible scenarios involved in a change.

“If I thought my job was at risk, would I want an e-mail blast? Would I want my manager to talk to me? Would I want the CEO to have a town hall and explicitly state things? It’s thinking through the employee perspective that facilitates better engagement and helps people feel more valued,” she said.

Allison asserts that when employees perceive that their views have been heard and respected, they will also feel psychologically a part of the change and participate in its management even if they aren’t in the C-suite leading it. This is the key to building unity and momentum behind a transition.

The value of fresh data

While many companies may choose to lead change internally, Allison believes some common missteps can slow an organization’s progress. Chief among these is letting their strategy be guided by bias or outdated information rather than gathering fresh data with an impartial perspective, a key value-add of the Savills approach.

“A lot of what we do is analysis. We do surveys, we do interviews, we gather data to inform the decisions,” she said. “Whereas a lot of times what I’ve seen with people who do it internally at their company, they are using historical information that no longer applies, or letting their biases lead them down a strategic path instead of coming in with a clear mind.”

Gathering targeted data for the purpose at hand can also help organizations identify the change strategy that best fits them instead of playing follow-the-leader. Allison points to the example of companies that pivoted to all-remote work in the wake of Google's announcement of an initiative to do so. “Google did a lot of research into their people and how it would affect their company. A law firm can’t operate the same way Google does,” she noted.

“This is another huge part of change management. You’re managing the change for each individual client and their culture,” said Allison. “It shouldn’t be a one-size-fits-all.”

Allison Hochberg is an Associate Director for Savills who brings nearly a decade of experience in planning, implementing and managing change and stakeholder communications programs for clients. Navigating projects with patience and empathy, Allison partners with clients to anticipate and solve issues to minimize potential business disruption.

Get in touch with Allison: ahochberg@savills.us