Sanne Russcher
Manager
Sanne is a driven, creative, and committed leader with experience in change management, program management, and team development. With her sharp analytical eye, she quickly identifies underlying issues and knows how to initiate meaningful change. She is motivated to apply her expertise in teams working on societal challenges, such as the energy transition.
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In my work as an organizational consultant in the energy sector, I see it happen again and again. Organizations invest heavily in technology, infrastructure, and programs to drive the energy transition. They work hard, with committed and highly skilled people. And yet it never really takes off. Changes stall in pilots, programs get stuck in the line organization, and employees grow weary of constant change. At times things seem to be moving in the right direction, but when you look back a year later, the flag is still flying in exactly the same place.
In my experience, what is missing is rarely a sense of urgency or a lack of expertise. What is missing is a thoughtful architecture of change.
Change is not a project
The biggest misconception I encounter is the idea that change is temporary. Something you organize on the side. Carefully designed with a program team, an end date, and a handover moment. That approach may work for a system implementation, but not for the energy transition. The energy transition is not a project but a fundamental system change. It affects strategy, operations, culture, governance, and identity. That calls for a different set of questions. How is change organized in our organization? Who makes decisions when outcomes are uncertain? Who is allowed to experiment? Who safeguards safety, and who is permitted to deviate from it temporarily?
As long as these questions remain implicit, I see the same pattern emerge. Innovation flourishes among a small group of forerunners, while caution dominates the heart of the organization.
The human side is not a soft side
I often hear people say, “We included the people side.” What they usually mean is communication. But the people side of the energy transition is not about informing. It is about craftsmanship under pressure.
Employees are expected to work with new technologies, new laws and regulations, and conflicting interests. They have to make decisions before everything is settled, in an industry that is used to security, safety, and predictability. That has a real impact on people.
I still vividly remember what it was like to lead a new team. We emerged from a successful pilot, but in reality nothing was firmly in place yet. I was leading a group of deeply committed people who set the bar high. They wanted to get it right. To be experts yesterday rather than today. To be technically excellent while also mastering new processes and new conversations with customers. At the same time, we had to establish our position within the organization. We were being pulled and, at times, pushed from all sides.
As a leader, it was one of the most rewarding periods of my career. Navigating the tension between old and new, demonstrating progress, and above all doing so in a way that was sustainable for the future. It felt like playing chess on countless levels, but most importantly, it was about keeping the people on board. Listening to them, supporting them, guiding them, motivating them, sometimes pulling them back above water, and connecting them with one another. Growing pains were part of the journey, and only by embracing them were we able to move forward.
Good change management is not about organizing support. It is about creating space to learn. About leaders who dare to name the discomfort. About teams that are allowed to practice, reflect, and adjust. About leadership that not only provides direction, but also actively creates safety.
Anchoring requires courage
Perhaps what moves me most in practice is that people genuinely want to change, but the organizations they work in are unconsciously not yet designed for it. I see enthusiastic professionals who search every day for new solutions, who feel responsible for the energy transition and for their craft. But I also see them getting stuck because the structures around them remain unchanged.
Roles, consultation structures, and decision making are often still designed for stability, control, and predictability. We unconsciously place much of the responsibility for change on individuals. On the initiators. The pioneers. The people who do it on the side. If you are talking about sustainable change, this is not it. Because no matter how committed people are, without structural support they burn out, become cynical, or eventually drop out.
True anchoring means that, as an organization, you reclaim responsibility from the individual. You make an explicit choice that change is part of the work, not an extra effort on top of it. This can take many forms. Designing decision making so that uncertainty is not a reason to stand still. Choosing ways of working in which minority voices are supported. Recalibrating KPIs so they steer not only toward reliability, but also toward learning. It also means not leaving learning and reflection to good intentions, but organizing them structurally. Stability and change coexist, and sometimes they clash. That is not a problem. It is a sign that you are serious about learning as an organization.
Anchoring change takes courage. Structural change affects people. It touches power, responsibilities, and carefully constructed routines. It requires leaders not only to point the way forward, but also to have the courage to talk about what we are letting go of, what that means for people, and what support is needed. Only there, in that discomfort, does change become sustainable.
The future
Organizations in the energy sector that want to remain successful in the years ahead do not need yet another program. They need a clear architecture of change: a coherent design in which steering, learning, decision making, and anchoring are logically connected. Change then becomes not a disruption of the work, but part of the work itself. And for me, that is exactly where the key lies to truly advancing the energy transition.
