It’s never easy to make big change, especially in your office or place of work.

What kind of change are we talking about? It might be changing the culture, changing a standard operating procedure, even changing a colleague’s mind to veer toward the approach you believe is wisest.

Here's a tip I wish I knew earlier: Never forget to empathize and start small.

If you’re really looking to make change, like executive-level change, the onus is on you to break down your change into smaller, more manageable parts that you can educate the team on. When they're smaller, they're easier to understand, and easier to adopt.

Think about it this way, for a half-baked physical metaphor. Which scenario is more likely:

• you take one step, and then repeat that motion a thousand times

• you leap 500 feet forward in a single jump, and then do it again?

Come in guns blazing and you’ve immediately lost the room. Their pragmatic sensors will go off, listing a thousand reasons your plan is unreasonable.

But if you enter with empathy, a comprehensive plan made of small steps, and a firm understanding of how it’s going to benefit the people you seek to convince? Now you’ve got yourself a chance of succeeding.

Now you've got yourself a chance to make change.