Change Signal: Modern Change Management that Works

Here are three big questions that arise from this Change Signal conversation with Scott D. Anthony:  What's systematically killing curiosity in your organization? Can you hold your team in that sweet spot between comfort and chaos? And Are your excuses actually avoiding the real work of transformation? Scott D. Anthony, Clinical Professor of Business Administration at Tuck and innovation strategis...

Here are three big questions that arise from this Change Signal conversation with Lisa Reynolds: Are you actually enabling resistance? When did you last grieve something? How many individual changes are you actually managing? Lisa Reynolds leads change management at Christus Health, where her small team punches way above their weight across a massive healthcare system. She's learned that change wo...

Julie Dirksen’s three key insights about modern change mastery: most training fails because it ignores immediate relevance; organizational change temporarily destroys people's competence and professional identity; corporate learning only addresses logic while ignoring the emotional brain that actually drives decisions. Julie Dirksen joins me to dissect why most corporate training feels like "high...

Here are three big questions that arise from this Change Signal conversation with Dan Cable:  Are you leading with fear-based management?; How much "freedom within the frame" are you offering? and How do you use dopamine to best fuel your change efforts? Dan Cable, Professor of Organizational Behaviour at London Business School, argues that as the world moves faster, leaders can no longer afford t...

 A CEO, a counsellor, and a consultant share a key question each about change:  How do you really make things safe for people? Could powerlessness actually, ironically, be a superpower? What’s the difference between guardrails and control layers? What if everything you know about leading change is backwards? Garry Ridge turned WD-40 into a global phenomenon by doing something that sounds like care...

The three key insights from this episode: change is orienteering through unknown territory, not following a GPS route; organizations are addicted to efficiency when they desperately need experimentation; and the best experiments are designed to fail safely, not succeed predictably. I'm diving solo into why small experiments might be the only sane approach to change in these chaotic times. After 30...

Keith McCandless’s three key insights: meetings fail because we use five invisible patterns that systematically exclude people; anyone can facilitate breakthrough conversations using simple rules, no charisma required; and boosting both autonomy and responsibility simultaneously creates wildly productive teams. Most change leaders know meetings suck, but Keith McCandless, co-author of The Surprisi...

Jennifer Garvey Berger’s three key insights: connectivity matters more than individual talent in complex systems; small experiments beat both over-planning and paralysis; and stories are legitimate measures of change before numbers shift. If you've ever had a change plan that hasn't quite gone according to plan (and honestly, who hasn't?), this conversation with Jennifer Garvey Berger will shift h...

Mark Surman’s three key insights: spending years wrestling with whether your foundational values still make sense; accepting that legacy teams can't build the future, so you need separate structures; and mastering the ability to think across different timescales simultaneously. Mark Surman, Mozilla's president, shares the messy reality of transforming a 25-year-old organization for the AI era. He'...

Three key insights from Anne Gotte: change management is as outdated as "personnel" organizations must diagnose their change allergies before attempting transformation; and leaders need to embrace clumsy imperfection while providing clear direction. Anne Gotte is SVP Global Talent & Organization Effectiveness at Mondelēz and she brings refreshing honesty to the messy reality of organizational tran...

Three key insights: Change work isn't transformative anymore—it's operational; your organization does everything the same dysfunctional way; and everyone secretly benefits from broken patterns. My guest, Rodney Evans from TheReady, has abandoned talking about "adaptability" because people's eyes glaze over. Instead, she starts every conversation with leaders by asking about their gnarliest cross-f...

Could it be that your strategic planning is actually paralyzing you, your biggest critics hold the keys to breakthrough innovation, and the military metaphors you're using to lead change are fundamentally broken? Charles Conn, former McKinsey partner, former Head of Rhodes House, and current chair of Patagonia's board, brings a provocative challenge to how we think about transformation. He argues...

Discover why emotional "monsters" sabotage change projects, learn the "fight it three times" rule for managing upwards, and understand why grief is the most overlooked emotion in transformation work. Molly Graham has scaled teams at Google and Meta, and now runs Glue Club for startup operators. She brings hard-won wisdom about the messy human side of change that most leaders pretend doesn't exist....

Why does nobody care about your billion-dollar vision, what can Chick-fil-A teach you about bottlenecks, and how does fixing one problem always create another? Dan Heath drops some astute and provocative truths about change leadership that'll make you rethink and reset your approach to change. First up: your carefully crafted corporate vision probably sucks because it's all about hitting numbers i...

Most change programs get the sequence backwards; uncertainty secretly sabotages willpower; and using your non-dominant hand might triple your success rate. My guest, Roy Baumeister, is one of psychology's rock stars, and he's spent decades studying what actually works when it comes to willpower and behaviour change. Turns out, we've (mostly) been doing it wrong. Here's the thing: everyone assumes...

What if the pain you're pushing through is actually the data you need; resilience programs are burning billions on the wrong problem; and there's a psychological theory that could transform your change work, but almost no one in business knows about it? Here's the uncomfortable truth: we're living in a "chaos era" of chronic, compounding stress that our bodies weren't designed for. Traditional res...

Could it be that the biggest barrier to change isn't resistance from others, but three voices in your own head? And what if taking action too quickly is actually making everything worse? Otto Scharmer, creator of Theory U and MIT lecturer, reveals why most transformation efforts fail at the deepest level. The problem isn't strategy or resources—it's that we're fighting internal enemies we don't ev...

Learn why trust is contextual, resistance signals engagement, and successfully navigating change requires embracing uncertainty. In this episode of Change Signal, I dive deep with Rachel Botsman, the world's expert on trust and Oxford University fellow, to explore how trust enables change — and how change can damage trust. Rachel challenges us to identify our organization's "trust states" and segm...

Discover how a simple three-role model can reveal dysfunctional patterns, what your least-played role says about your biggest triggers, and which powerful questions can transform strained relationships during change. In this LinkedIn Live, I dive into the Karpman Drama Triangle—a model I've used for 30+ years as both a self-management and change management tool. We all play Victim, Persecutor, and...

Collaborating across differences, embracing unpredictability, and balancing power with love: these are the keys to transforming your organization's most challenging dilemmas. Adam Kahane teaches us that meaningful change often demands working with people we don't agree with, like, or trust. He calls it "radical collaboration." Think you need alignment before taking action? Think again. Kahane's mo...

Emotion in business, slowing down to speed up, and regular check-ins that boost engagement—these are the game-changers for leading transformation. In this short but powerful episode, Cassandra Worthy challenges the outdated notion that feelings have no place in organizational change. Why do we still pretend emotions don't exist in the workplace? It's absurd—and counterproductive. Cassandra argues...

Create to inspire forward motion, link your work to winning, and clarify who makes what decisions—these are the power moves that can elevate change work from frustrating to focused. David Lancefield brilliantly reframes "change" and "transformation" as words that trigger apathy or fear, suggesting we talk instead about creation. When you lead change initiatives, David insists you trace a clear lin...

Tension drives innovation, productive conflict is essential for change, and effective listening helps you understand what truly matters to people. Dr. Liane Davey reveals how to use conflict as a catalyst for positive change in organizations where most teams have too little productive tension, not too much. As a change leader, it turns out that your job isn't to avoid conflict but to create the ri...

Here's prototype testing, hypothesis-driven change leadership, and the power of radical differentiation all rolled into one fascinating conversation. I'm SO over slow, overplanned, change management disconnected from reality. That's why I brought in John Zeratsky, former design leader at YouTube and Google, who pioneered a process for testing new ideas in just five days. John reminds us that every...

In this episode: Navigating uncertainty versus ambiguity, treating strategy as a living conversation, and looking beyond the obvious for weak signals. Dr. Jason Fox challenges conventional notions of change management by urging us to develop sensibilities rather than just skills. He argues that traditional scenario planning creates an illusion of control that fails when contexts shift radically. W...