Dear Change Leader, Well, we’ve reached that time of the year again! It’s mid-December, and our thoughts are naturally turning towards holidays and breaks from work. The New Year beckons us, and we approach it with either a sense of opportunity or a sense of dread… and perhaps a mix...

How hard can it be to develop a plan? You’d be surprised at just how challenging it can be! There are so many things that can go wrong – both in the process of developing the plan, and in the process of implementing the plan. But I think there is one...

Leadership Transitions can be hard. Even The Walt Disney Company has stumbled, as this article points out,  highlighting its efforts to land on the right path. types of organizational change The problem: companies are not aware that they are engaging in ‘magical thinking’ when it comes to leadership transitions. Organizations,...

  Unleashing Collective Wisdom: Using “Wise Crowds” to Supercharge your Leadership In today’s fast-paced environment, leaders are continually confronted by new and unfamiliar situations. This means that they are also looking for guidance on how to deal with these novel challenges. When you are facing something you’ve not encountered before,...

Congratulations! You’ve done it! organizational change leadership You’re at the end of your change initiative, and, despite earlier concerns, things have ended successfully! How are you going to celebrate this accomplishment? Here are some ideas of activities that you can do together as a team! Team lunch or dinner: Organize...

What happens at the end of an organizational change initiative? If you search online or through books and articles on managing change, there are surprisingly few resources to guide change leaders. organizational change leadership However, the ending phase of change (the Harvesting phase in the RCA Seasons of Growth framework)...

The end is in sight! The finish line is close! At last, you can declare success and bring this change initiative to an end! Or can you? What might happen to all of the hard work that you and the team have put into this project? We’re in the final phase...

“Here’s what’s happening, and here’s what you can expect.” examples of organizational change   With these words, the pilot on a recent flight let us know that there was going to be a delay. She explained why (storms on our flight path), how long we could expect to be delayed...

Implementing organizational change doesn’t have to be challenging. If you’re a leader interested in how to do this well, I’ve got 5 insider tips to share with you. Change is the only constant, the old adage goes. Organizations need to change to meet new demands, and an evolving marketplace. When...

What can we learn from gardeners about organizational change and leadership? Actually, quite a lot! Gardeners are stewards of the land. And good leaders recognize that they are stewards of their teams and organizations. (Even if they are founders, they will most likely pass it on to someone else at...

“A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.” Katzenbach and Smith (2015) The Wisdom of Teams I find this such a helpful description of a team! It is simple, clear,...

Will a Mackenzie Scott grant to your nonprofit make you MORE or LESS attractive to other donors? Ever since Mackenzie Scott began making unexpected Transformational Gifts to nonprofits in 2019/2020 (a total of about $16 billion so far), some have had a concern that these gifts will somehow ‘chase away’...

Oof – that was unexpected! Who knew there was going to be so much resistance to this organizational change? Have you ever been in this situation? You recently launched a change initiative with great fanfare! You’ve been planning this change for a while, but the response is less enthusiastic than...

You’re excited about the future! You’ve got an ambitious strategy to grow and scale a proven program so that you can reach many more people! But are you really ready for growth? The unfortunate reality is that too many organizations find themselves overwhelmed by the practical challenges of managing growth....

Is a team productive if they complete the task on time, but had such a toxic experience in doing so that they never want to work together again? I was once part of a team like this. We were four people, brought together from different parts of the world, to...

It’s been quite a journey, but finally you have arrived! You’ve completed the ambitious organizational change process that you launched a while back. But will the benefits of the changes you’ve brought about be sustained? Will they last long enough to make all this hard work worthwhile? To be clear,...

It’s summertime as I write, a time when things slow down from the usual pace we experience for the rest of the year. So I’m enjoying taking time to read some new books and revisit old favorites. I think you will enjoy them too!   Karolin Helbig and Minette Norman...

You bring the change team together for one of your regular meetings. The change initiative has been underway for six months. You’ve been following the “rolling six month plan” that you developed together. You have just completed a round of collecting progress data. And things are… just a bit off course....

Do you remember how you felt in April 2020? That was the point when we all began to realize that this COIVD-19 pandemic might be around for longer than we had anticipated. And all the plans we had for the year were in jeopardy! Remember that feeling? We realized that...

Kolmanskop is an abandoned town on the edge of the Namib Desert in southern Africa. Once it was one of the wealthiest, most lively places in that country. Today, it is considered a ‘ghost town’ and the desert has reclaimed for itself the once-majestic houses that made up the town....