Organizational Change

Managing Change by Changing the Conversation

photo of people talking to each other

I’ve always liked Peter Block’s statement, “To change the organization, change the conversation.” Creating organizational change is largely about organizing the right conversations between the right people—that’s how relationships and ways of working together are altered. Deepening that notion, I was at a dinner with Peter at a friend’s house the other night, and I…

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Denial and Conspiracy Theories during Organizational Change

organizational change conspiracy theory

Organizational change depends a lot on perception. I saw the movie “Denial” recently, which is based on the book History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier. The movie covers the 2001 court battle between American historian Deborah Lipstadt and Holocaust denier David Irving. Mr. Irving sued her for libel regarding how…

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Change or Die is Dead Wrong

Dr. Morten Hansen recently stood in front of a room of over one thousand change management professionals and said “Change or die” is “dead wrong.”  I saw Dr. Hansen speak in Los Angeles at the 2012 Conference of the Association of Change Management Professionals. He was drawing from new research unveiled in his book, Great…

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Obama’s Change Consultants

Last year there was an article in Time about how the Obama administration was consulting experts in the science of influence to devise campaign strategies. The work of Robert Cialdini was mentioned, and I’ve since read his book Influence and thought it was excellent. Additionally, the article said The existence of this behavioral dream team…

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Guidelines for Strengthening Your Change Plan

Frequently, the intention to change and organizational inertia clash so that nothing ends up actually changing. Smart people spend a lot of time coming up with the change, but comparatively little time on the change plan, which so often involves only a launch email and an announcement that training is available. But the study of…

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Qualification of Organizational Change Projects

When organizational change initiatives are first initiated, they are often vague and uncertain. Sometimes those who desire the change underestimate the effort that will be required; other times, they over estimate it. I use two questions to initially frame and qualify the proposed change. How many people are affected? How much of a change will…

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