Having walked hundreds of kilometers on pilgrimages — from Lithuania to Santiago — change management consultant and show host Lina Mieliauskienė says that organizational change is always a journey too.

You start with good intentions and enthusiasm, but soon realize that old “sneakers,” habits, and methods that once worked for everyone now only get in the way. You have to leave them behind and keep moving, sometimes even barefoot, she says.

On the pilgrim’s path, you know: the backpack must not be too heavy, the most important thing is not the kilometers but the people you meet at the end of the day. And everyone travels in their own way — some faster, some slower, some with sore feet, others with a heavy heart.

It is the same in organizations. Change always comes in waves: some employees embrace it enthusiastically, others pause or resist. Mieliauskienė advises that a leader does not need to embrace everyone — it is enough to focus on a close group of six people, who will then pass the attention forward. From hundreds of individual steps, a shared movement emerges.

In the podcast Beyond Economics and Back, change management consultant Lina Mieliauskienė and LFMI president Elena Leontjeva discuss how change, though always unsettling, becomes easier when taken together — even if it means walking barefoot.