This is a true story. No instructional designers or facilitators were harmed…threatened a little…but not harmed permanently.
It was a Monday morning. Early. I’d already sucked down three cups of coffee…not counting the venti bold with a shot on the way to work. I could no longer hear the ringing in my ears due to the buzz in my brain now masking all other real or imagined internal bodily noises.
At first glance Change Management (CM) and Change Leadership (CL) may be considered interchangeable and simply more jargon used to confuse a familiar concept. Stay with me on this post as there is a significant difference when the end-game is the desire to create full adoption and sustained capability of any Change initiative.
Now that title should generate a ripple or two on the pond, especially when I have been so vocal about the need for just such a shift. So…is this post a confession that I have changed my mind? Not quite. Not even. If anything, I am more passionate than ever, but over the years, I have gotten smarter about moving around obstacles that stifle momentum rather than fight through immovable walls of opposition or resistance. My new approach requires the application of marshal arts – judo – to be more precise. No, not kicking butts, just taking the momentum of my opponents, and leveraging it to my advantage to wrestle them to the mat. Not to pin them in defeat, just hold them down long enough to hear me out – listen to evidence that this “shift” is not a threat.