Ask Dr. Change

Most change efforts struggle to get early traction without clarity, leadership and alignment. The Upstream stage of change is all about getting your initiatives off the ground with sound process and governance. This episode outlines the seven requirements for launching for success, each clarifying what it takes to set up a strong start, which leads to a better and faster finish. Accomplishing this...

Although every major change effort has a sponsor, not many sponsors fully understand the role, how to set up the effort for success, and provide clear guidance from start to completion. When consulting to sponsors, there are ten extremely important questions that can have them thinking more strategically, engaging more fully, and providing the kind of leadership their initiatives require. Come hea...

All projects address designing the solution for the future state. However, most set up a Design Team or use consultants primarily of content experts to come up with their best recommendation. However, recall: “Having the solution is not the solution”! The design process directly impacts your ability to get the solution adopted and sustained. Content expertise, while essential, is not sufficient, e...

Using the ten most common mistakes as an assessment of your organization’s current reality in leading change is a powerful way to identify the costliest of the mistakes. Only then can leaders and internal change support resources look at how the mistakes come to happen and options for how to reduce their negative impact or avoid them completely. This episode takes each mistake and outlines several...

Over 45 years of observing organizations undergoing major change, we have identified ten of the most common mistakes leaders make, and often repeat, to the detriment of their desired outcomes. This episode outlines these mistakes and discusses some of the underlying causes of them. It makes the case that most organizations can benefit from objectively assessing how they lead change against these m...

While leading major change efforts is happening in all organizations, the effectiveness given the multitude of ways it is led produces vastly different results. This episode outlines making change a strategic discipline, much like Finance, Human Resources and IT. Change is not going away and it deserves strategic oversight to ensure all change is done in the most effective and efficient way. This...

Joe Rafter has spent his career achieving results in a vast array of organizations and specializing the Change Leadership. In one chapter of his career, he stood up an Enterprise Change Management function at Pacific Gas and Electric. He is an advocate for leadership and personal self-awareness, modeling effective culture, and pursing true adoption in change. As the self-proclaimed “greatest advoc...

Donna Brighton brings decades of experience to the change leadership field as well as self-mastery and continuous learning. She is a founding Board Member and Past-President of the Association of Change Management Professionals (ACMP) helping to shape the profession. She empowers leaders and teams to unlock their full potential, consistently driving higher levels of performance and breakthrough ou...

In Part II of Linda’s overview of organizational energy dynamics, she builds on doing an Energy Scan to identify and assess current energy dynamics in the organization undergoing change and explores strategies to mitigate or strengthen each of the five elements of energy on behalf of realigning them to produce your desired outcomes from change. She discusses ways to influence energy sources, chann...

Linda shares this powerful, non-traditional approach to assessing the ability of an organization to achieve results from change---through understanding and influencing the organization’s energy dynamics. Linda describes organizational energy as the fuel to make change happen and outlines five elements of energy dynamics that exist in every organization. These elements can be identified, evaluated...

Jake Jacobs has been around the change block many times over. One of his greatest contributions in the field of Large-Scale Change Interventions is Real-Time Strategic Change. Jake shares with Linda hs history, current work focus, and advice on the next edge of the Change field for both leaders and consultants. Come meet the man and hear his insights!   To watch the full video version of this podc...

Most Change Management practitioners rightly focus a lot of energy and attention on managing their stakeholders to overcome resistance and adopt the future state. While helpful, this does not guarantee generating the amount of momentum required for a project to achieve its desired outcomes. This episode introduces how to create a critical mass of energy to support project success. By identifying a...

How to ensure your transformational changes succeed? In this episode, Dr. Dean Anderson and Linda (Dr. Change), founders of this work, describe Being First’s Leading Transformational Change online program that features ten best practice strategies essential for succeeding at transformational change. They describe the essence of each strategy and the real situations that prompted the need for them,...

This episode presents guidance for dealing with both leader and stakeholder resistance to change. It’s essential to understand the human dynamics underlying resistance, how it shows up, and how to support the process of people becoming committed and aligned to change. It explores how we as leaders and consultants need to show up and be skilled at supporting people through their internal process, a...

Most organizations with long and successful histories are tough to change. Yet change they must. How can leaders get the attention of their managers and stakeholders that a major change is needed, coming and serious? This episode describes the strategy of Bold Actions that do just this! Leaders must consciously alert their organizations to make necessary change—from the very beginning. Hosted on A...

While every major change effort has a defined scope, most are incomplete and often need to be expanded to achieve desired outcomes. This episode highlights the areas required to define a full scope, one that ensures better outcomes and influences the initial definition of project budget and timeline. Scope needs to focus on the content of the change as well as the human and cultural dynamics requi...

Theresa Moulton is one of the Change Management superstars supporting the field and pushing its edges after 25 years of experience and relentless entrepreneurial spirit. She shares her journey to this esteemed position of both delivering change and coaching services to clients and leading one of the most highly regarded online resources for organizational Change Management professionals.  To watch...

Andrew Johnson, Master Coach and Being First Associate, interviews Linda about her views on leaders and consultants taking on the Conscious Change Leadership approach to the transformations they require or serve. Linda openly discusses this as the cutting edge and necessity for the field of change leadership.  To watch the full video version of this podcast, please visit AskDrChange.com .  Hosted...

In this episode, Linda interviews Andrew Johnson, Master Coach and Being First Associate. Andrew has traveled the entire development road with Being First to become a Conscious Change Leader. He exemplifies the candor, authenticity, knowledge and foresight so essential to meet today’s challenges. Come hear this man’s perspectives on his journey and next edges to inspire your own development path....

What is change adoption and why is it so difficult to achieve and sustain? In this episode, Dr. Change reveals the work required to obtain adoption by exploring how to support stakeholders to fully integrate a project’s new state into their daily ways of operating and then master it for optimal and sustained results. As a major focus of Change Management, this capability is essential. The actions...

With major change so widespread in organi­zations, the need for internal and external consulting support has grown exponentially—as have the number and kinds of change consultants to service it. We change consultants come in many shapes and sizes. Which are you… and are you playing the best and highest value role you can? This episode describes a range of change consultant types, styles, and exper...

Most organizations today are fraught with so much change that it’s hard for leaders to stay on top of everything they are asking of the organization. In this episode, Linda describes the need for and elements of the Enterprise Change Agenda, a proven mechanism to organize and coordinate an organization’s priority initiatives so they can realistically and effectively achieve their outcomes. The Ent...

Most organizational change efforts rely on the tried-and-true approaches of Project Management and Change Management. However, when a project is transformational, it requires an expanded approach, beyond these two. Transformational change has a unique set of requirements that need attention before—and after—these standard approaches come in to play. This episode outlines the distinctions of transf...

The role of the Change Process Leader is a breakthrough strategy for successfully leading transformational change. Beyond Project Management and Change Management, this role oversees how a transformation is stood up, led, and adjusted to achieve sustained results. Kate MacDonald, Executive Director of Professionalism, Leadership & Inclusion at York Regional Police (YRP), has fulfilled this rol...

Our most complex and transformational change projects face many predictable hurdles. Current project leader roles and processes do not prevent or mitigate these struggles. A new leadership role is needed and possible! It requires a paradigm shift in understanding transformational change and how best to lead it. Introducing the Change Process Leader, a role proven to produce radically improved resu...