Change Course

A Rolls Royce, a Lake House in Muskoka, the newest iPhone, Air Jordans what do all of these things have in common? They are all status markers. We humans have always used status markers to show others how much relative status, and therefore how much power we have relative to the group we are engaged with. Status and power are related. So when you’re a leader trying to bring about change, you need...

One of my favourite references when talking about ingroups, outgroups and toxic culture is the movie mean girls. Not only was it filmed in my hometown with a lead actress from Toronto (shoutout to Rachel McAdams!) but also because it is a great illustration of how toxic cultures can start. In this episode of the Change Course podcast, I get into how ingroups and outgroups form and drive toxic cult...

There is an intersection between power, influence and culture, two key elements of Connected Change ™. This relationship drives how effective leaders are at bringing about changes in their organizations, and what drives us, as humans, to behave in certain ways around powerful and influential people. Human nature, social structures and relationships are driven by our need to seek status and affilia...

How do you become an organization that does CHANGE well? The truth is that our world has entered a period of rapid, sustained, and relentless change. Change that happens to us is exhausting and drains our energy. Multiple successive big changes can run an organization and its culture into the ground. One of the ways to build change resilience is to make change a part of the organization and its cu...

I got this song stuck in my head recently "Back to Life, Back to Reality" by the amazing 90's pop culture phenomenon Soul II Soul. I think it accurately describes how we are all feeling right now.  While many organizations started their "back to the office" campaigns earlier this year,  it kind of felt a bit like everyone had escaped to the lake this summer... and now, after the final lo...

After all of the discussions of culture and change -- what do you do if you're starting a new team or organization,  how can you build an amazing culture?  Culture is fast becoming a competitive advantage.  Employees are seeking out cultural fit for themselves and are choosing organizations with strong cultures more frequently.  Defining culture is just as important as defining strategy, but h...

Culture has a gravitational pull on the organization and its people. So what causes this?  In this episode we dive into the realm of social psychology to understand group dynamics, and how viewing organizations with this lens helps us to define and understand culture.  We meet some old friends along the way, and talk about why working organizations are not families.  Group and social dynamics is t...

When we are trying to change an organization's culture it is hard! This change takes the longest and requires incredible leadership and persistence. Building upon the last three episodes, I talk about breaking down the current behaviours and interactions and defining the desired interactions and behaviours that we want to see in the change.  My belief based on my experience in cultural change...

Have you ever walked into a place, caught the "vibes" and thought: "This is not for me".  Well that's culture!  The first step to changing our organization's culture is fully understanding what it is.  With a clear definition of what our culture is, we can identify what we want to change, and start planning out how we will do that.  I break down cultural change objectiv...

It's culture month at the change course podcast! Tune in all month as we bring you amazing content on organizational culture and culture change.   Culture is one of my favourite subjects to discuss and one of the 5 elements in Connected Change (TM) for a reason!  One of the central tenets of organizational culture is that it is stable. It has a gravitational center that remains the same over l...

Once we've defined the behaviours we want to see in the change, how to we ensure that they happen?  This is where rewards and recognition come in.   There is a lot of new science and understanding on how rewards and recognition work.  In this episode I weave together old science with the new, and talk through examples of how this has played out in the change work I've done in various setti...

Leading people through change means that we, as change leaders, need to work through behavioural change and the adoption of new behaviours to replace old ones.  Sometimes maladaptive behaviours are difficult to uproot because they have a system of reinforcement.  To change this, we need to "ignore" the behavior (stop reinforcing it).  What then happens is that the unwanted behavior incre...

Implementation and adoption requires that we change behaviour.  When all is said and done, and after everything has been set up and is ready, reality hits when we actually have to DO something!  I walk through several examples in this episode that illustrate this phenomenon and how behavioural science helps us understand what works, and what doesn't when we're implementing change.   Show n...

We're taking a pause from our regularly scheduled programming to answer a great question that popped up in one of the change forums out there on the wild wild internet.  This week we address how to change successfully in an entrenched cynical culture that is also a unionized organization.  We draw from Connected Change (TM) to frame the answer using the five elements to frame and approac...

In this episode we talk about the power of story and history and examine the stories of two different organizations that had specific approaches to this.  One had a historian on staff and a whole department devoted to the archives of the organization.  In an environment of change and flux, their historical record became the standard when change meant that few people could remember history for them...

Are you a new Change Manager? Have you just been handed a big change project and don't know where to start? This is our final episode in a 4 episode series on my expert advice to Change Managers just starting out and how to set yourself up for success! Go back and check out all of the “For the Newbies” podcasts to catch up. In this episode we talk about what change managers don’t want to talk...

In this episode we talk about the important link between “talking the talk” and “walking the walk”. Change for the people doing the change requires a change in behavior. So how do we make this happen? Change in behavior is not achieved by talking about it, but rather by doing it. Where talking and doing align, you’ll see amazing results! Secondly, the critically important part of change is leaders...

The question my anxious clients always ask at the beginning of a change initiative?  "When can I see the change management plan!"  and oh my, I do sometimes need a little patience when we think that all of the answers will be inside this magical document. Gathering the inputs and documenting the plan is the next step in a successful change management approach. This is an extremely helpfu...

Are you a new Change Manager? Have you just been handed a big change project and don't know where to start?  Follow along for this 4 episode series on my expert advice to Change Managers just starting out and how to set yourself up for success. In this episode we talk about the fundamental role of the change manager, and thinking about change leadership and the people they are leading in two k...

The first step in successful change is letting go.  Letting go of the past, expectations, what has always been, is a critical part of the change journey. Without letting go of the past, we cannot make space for what is to come.  We have a hard time doing this, however, and letting go brings up a lot of very negative emotions that people typically want to avoid.  So how can we better manage our thi...

The organizational ecosystem helps us understand how our organizations respond to change and how we can manage change more effectively as change leaders. Over the past few episodes we've discussed systems theory and how understanding organizational systems help us better understand how change happens in a group setting.    Well, this is where we get to the good stuff.  What if there was a chan...

During the Pandemic, our world was turned upside down. As we exit into the immediate post-pandemic period, it seems like many of the changes that were made are going to stick. Why is that?  When looking at complex adaptive systems and change, having another event kick the system out of homeostasis can actually be a huge advantage to bringing about changes to the system itself. Also - humans? We LO...

Change is not a process, it is the destination.  If we look at change as a process in a systems view, it doesn't work! Complex Adaptive Systems aren't linear, so applying linear process to a system often ends in failure.  When we add a layer, thinking about systems in homeostasis, we start to see why incremental change, tweaks and nudges work.  Systems seek steady state, and small a...

In the domain of biology, organic biological systems are characterised by a state of homeostasis or "steady state".  Complex adaptive systems are adaptive in nature, in that they exist in steady state and attempt to preserve steady state through adaptation.  When something threatens or changes the system, thereby interrupting steady state, the system will adapt to return to steady state...

Humans and our organizations are more like bees and beehives than they are like machines and component parts!  Human systems are more like the complex adaptive systems that we see in nature.  Complex, because the relationships and behaviours that make up the way the system operates are complex and interconnected.  It can be difficult to predict how a complex system will respond to c...