Ugh.  It’s election season in the United States and the rhetoric is flying in every direction. Since I live in the “swing state” of Florida, it’s nearly impossible to watch television for five minutes without being told who’s going to raise my taxes or destroy my future. Regular readers of this blog know that I [...]

As a Change Agent, one of my most common roles is that of “Facilitator”.  One moment I will be asked to guide an executive team as they make tough decisions. The next, I’ll help resolve a personality dispute that’s blocking team success. As a neutral Facilitator, I’m often called to help an individual or a [...]

Change Agents are often asked to draft and deliver specific messages as a part of stakeholder communication. Whether a given communication event will take place by sending an email, posting website content, releasing a video or conducting a meeting, it’s easy for the details to fall through the cracks without proper planning and diligence.  Hence [...]

There’s a time to fall in love and a time to fall in line. Sorry to put it so bluntly, but while some changes are perceived as being a good deal for everyone involved, sometimes change is needed for less-then-positive reasons. In the world of implementing change, the chances are good that you’ll see both [...]

Change Agent Tip #31 In my last article, I described methods for Change Agents to reclaim control of their overflowing inboxes by, among other things, setting aside dedicated slices of time each day to focus on handling email and using a 2-minute rule to knock out emails that are easy to answer. Click here to [...]

Change Agent Tip #26 A wise man once told me that one reason people struggle with change is that it often means we’re going to lose something. It’s Personal: Consider the last time you were impacted by a significant change at work (or in life). You may have been asked to give up something in [...]

 Change Agent Tip #25 One of my favorite parts of helping people deal with change is the chance I get to work with some incredibly talented leaders at all levels of my client organizations. One such leader had a great way of boiling complex behavioral expectations down to simple phrases that I like to call [...]

This world lost the ultimate Change Agent yesterday when Steve Jobs passed away. I’m completely enamored with Apple products but I’m even more of a fan of the man who dreamed many of them up. In honor of his genius, here are 20 of my my favorite quotes from a true master in the Art [...]

In this final post of a 4-part series, I’ll wrap up a recipe for change success based on the notion that Change Agents should treat their work like a project. The first three posts suggested you apply classic project management discipline to: … clearly define and manage change activities, … execute change adoption plans based [...]

In an earlier post, I advised Change Agents to treat their change like a project in order to give it the structure and discipline needed for successful execution.  I also described a set of four “must haves” for Change Agents to deliver these projects. The list of key ingredients in my recipe for change project [...]

People often ask me the difference between “Change Management” and “Change Leadership”. In my last post, I answered the question with the old axiom: “You manage things and you lead people…”. I also listed some of the critical things (such as work activities, budgets and schedule dependencies) that Change Agents need to manage. Today I’ll [...]

When it comes to driving significant change in an organization, the old paradigm “…you manage things and you lead people…” is fairly accurate and surprisingly useful. Today’s tip covers how to recognize which elements of a Change Agent’s work are best addressed by management techniques. My next post will address the elements that require Change [...]

Most large-scale changes will at some point confront political resistance within some or all of the business units that make up the larger organization. The late, great American politician and House Speaker Tip O’Neill used to say: “All politics is local.” Hence, today’s post will offer advice on how to identify which of the five [...]

In my last post, I described a process Change Agents can use to gather preliminary data about the types of resistance they may expect to their change. As you follow through on the surveys, interviews and site visits as I described, you will start to amass a wealth of raw data. This data will contain [...]