208 Transition

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  • Chats are the oxygen of transition

    Last night I was pleasantly surprised when Justin Balaski—a thought leader from Canada—referred to an experience I had with a hiring manager earlier this year. During the interview, the process was paused and I was told, “change management is more than having chats with people.”

    I was deeply shocked by the comment and withdrew from the recruitment. It did more than signal a misalignment with the role; it was an unintentional attack on something I care about deeply—understanding people.

    Understanding people is all about asking questions and listening. If we cannot build the basis for dialogue, we cannot build the basis for individual transition. PROSCI makes this abundantly clear: organisational change is the aggregate of individual transitions. Understanding people builds empathy, and empathy builds trust. It is in this stable environment that people will engage.

    I learned this as a social worker working in the mental health systems of Sydney in the late 1990s. More recently, my learning about dialogue and trust emerged through coaching my daughter’s football team. Despite being experienced with people and systems, I made the error of contracting with the team as an expert—handouts on formations, principles of play, and expectations of players.

    Unsurprisingly, the players glazed over. One even folded the handout up as if to tear it in two.

    Even with all my experience, I misread the situation. Footballers, employees, people in psychiatric hospitals—all respond to being heard and understood. They do not respond to a display of how technically proficient you think you are as a leader, football coach, or change manager.

    With this reminder, I pivoted my approach. I focused first on building relationships with each player and the broader group as a platform to impart knowledge. Alongside individual chats, a system of training and game preparation, I aligned players to positions that showcased their strengths. When the players saw that I cared deeply about how they played—and how they felt—it built trust.

    Over time, I noticed the players looked at me differently. I was no longer someone demonstrating how good I was, but someone investing in them—to build their performance and their sense of themselves. This is the most critical piece when coaching 16-year-old girls.

    Three months ago, this team won the grand final deep into extra time. They did not lose a game all season. They executed the game plan to perfection. My input on grand final day was encouragement from the sideline and individual tactical prompts in the dugout and before the game. The trusting relationships were already there.

    The best part? They were not the best collection of individual players in the competition. They were, however, the best team—powered by trust built on dialogue.

    For leaders and change practitioners, this experience reinforced two things for me:

    • Dialogue is not the opposite of delivery; it is the precondition for it.
    • When people feel seen and heard, execution follows. When they don’t, no amount of technical expertise will compensate.

    Chats aren’t the soft part of change.
    They are the oxygen of transition.

    Thanks to Justin Balaski for reflecting this experience in a recent post — a reminder that dialogue is not the soft edge of change.

  • Change Leadership & Talent Management

    Building on the talent management theme in my last post, I revisited Dave Ulrich’s work on Talent Management. It raises a useful question: what is actually required from a Change Lead to build and manage talent across an enterprise-level change? So much is asked of leaders during change—yet what can a Change Lead do to ensure a major transformation builds enduring change capability, both within and beyond the project?

    Part of early sensemaking should include an assessment of the talent at the disposal of the change. What resources already exist? What is the capability and capacity of the HR business partners? Where are the gaps? Is there funding for training—either for the change team or for HR Business Partners who support the project?

    Ulrich provides a simple but powerful model: Buy, Build, Borrow, Bind and Bounce.

    Buy refers to attracting change management talent from outside the organisation. Effective Change Leads make a quick assessment of internal gaps and select external talent accordingly—whether long-term or short-term. Often the real value is in bringing in a “friendly outsider” who offers fresh perspective. A core capability for Change Leads is understanding the skills required and being able to represent the role clearly and credibly in the market.

    This is why collaboration with leadership and talent acquisition is essential. A Change Lead should be involved at every stage of recruitment and orientation—articulating expectations, shaping the role, and setting clear 30-, 60- and 90-day milestones.

    Too often, change and transition work is constrained by closed-system thinking. In a previous role, I was once told by an HR Business Partner—who had been in the organisation for nearly 30 years—that change would “always be delivered a certain way,” despite low employee satisfaction with how change had been managed. The organisation desperately needed broader perspectives, whether through strategic recruitment or short-term contracting.

    The Change Lead can also borrow resources—either from elsewhere in the organisation or from other organisations. Change careers are often seen as static rather than experience-driven, yet short-term secondments or assignments can significantly broaden a practitioner’s experience and “story book.” Maintaining a well-developed network of change managers is therefore a key capability for a Change Lead.

    It is also common to join a project where individuals are working in developmental roles. Many practitioners step into change management as a temporary assignment on their pathway to full professionalism. Not enough attention is given to the developmental and capability-building opportunities available in large-scale change projects. The speed and chaos of implementation can overshadow the longer-term value of building a resilient, capable change community. The result is an erosion of capability for future work.

    Change Leads should therefore take a deliberate, developmental approach: understanding the aspirations of team members, identifying growth opportunities, and designing work in a way that motivates and builds capability. Much of that capability will outlast both the Change Lead and the project itself. Performance development planning and group learning should be considered essentials, not luxuries.

    The Change Lead should also influence investment in training and certification. In many of my projects, organisations have invested heavily in accreditation, but decisions about who receives training often fail to consider long-term capability needs. The Change Lead should guide these decisions with a view to future organisational benefit. Credentials should go to those who will apply them and critically reflect on their use.

    Despite this, Change Leads are often confined to offering subject matter expertise, when the role should extend further—towards shaping identity, belonging and community within the change team. This is the bind element: role clarity, performance expectations, learning, rewards, and developmental pathways.

    Finally, bounce. Limiting the Change Lead to subject matter expertise also robs them of the ability to address underperformance. In resource-constrained environments, underperformance affects the wellbeing of other team members and can damage the reputation of the profession. Effective Change Leads manage performance proactively and compassionately. Learning and growth remain central, but accountability is essential.

    In the end, the Change Lead’s role is far broader than coordinating activities or supplying subject matter expertise. It is a leadership role in its own right — one that shapes capability, sets standards, protects the profession and creates the conditions for people to grow.

    When done well, the benefits outlast the program, the project and even the individuals involved. This is where change leadership becomes a form of enterprise stewardship: using the opportunity of a major transformation to strengthen the organisation’s talent, resilience and future capacity. That is the work that truly separates a Change Lead from a Change Manager.

  • Talent Management

    Let’s start with a story. I had a longstanding ambition to be a Senior Executive in a Government Department or within a Non-Government Organisation. From finishing my postgraduate degree in 2003 to making my internal transition in 2017, I was not part of any clear talent management program.

    The desire was there. I was keen to learn. I applied for leadership development programs – although very few were offered in the public service. I read widely and sought mentors where I could. In my most senior role, my professional development plan consisted of the occasional conversation.

    I reached a point where I could no longer see a future for myself in these senior roles. So I retrained – at my own expense – in human resources, change management and football coaching. Through this learning I began to see, from the outside in, the gaps in talent management in the public sector.

    There was, at that time, no real development pathway to become an Executive. There was no thoughtful answer to the question of why and how we should develop better leaders and better people.

    The data on the impact of professional development plans in Australia is patchy. Ironically, much of the research is in the public sector. There is minimal evidence supporting their impact. What does exist highlights what constitutes good practice: ongoing dialogue, co-design, and a genuine focus on growth and learning.

    Over the weekend I attended the Football NSW Coaches Conference. Speakers from the Japanese, German and Italian Football Associations, along with clubs like Melbourne City and Brighton & Hove Albion, spoke about talent development across professional clubs and international teams. Their central question was: how do we develop footballers — and people?

    Men, women, boys and girls. Youth to adults. Coaches and management. All were part of a clear development pathway. Brighton & Hove Albion, for example, have a structured framework that supports young footballers from as early as five years old, all the way through to the Premier League. Some make it to their first team. Others find opportunities with different clubs. But the journey is intentional.

    The core of their approach is something beautifully simple: the professional development plan. A shared dialogue that follows a player or coach over time. A conversation that captures strengths, gaps, preferred ways of learning, dreams, and the support needed to reach them. A learning-centred framework that clarifies the responsibilities of both the individual and the organisation.

    What struck me was how these plans functioned when circumstances changed. When a player was injured, or no longer a first-team prospect, the conversation became: how can we still help this person flourish? Perhaps through coaching. Perhaps through a loan to another club. The plan enabled not just continuity — but transformation.

    In that moment, it was clear to me that football is now years ahead of most public sector and corporate environments. They were talking about their people with dignity and intention. They were honouring the data their people had entrusted to them.

    I once worked in a public sector role where completed professional development plans were reported as a KPI of the HR function. On paper, I had a plan. In reality, I had a form.

    I repeatedly expressed commitment to growing as a change manager. I invested in my own training. Yet when I was let go — and another part of the organisation soon advertised a change manager role — there was no attempt to connect the opportunity with what I had articulated in my plan.

    This is not about bitterness — it’s about clarity. I’ve come to believe that a well-implemented development plan is not a procedural requirement — it is a covenant. A recognition of potential. A commitment to growth. A shared accountability.

    Brighton & Hove Albion would never let a young player simply slip through a bureaucratic crack without considering how to support their journey.

    And I suspect the organisations that learn to treat people with that level of intention and humanity will be the ones that ultimately thrive.

  • Inverting for Accountability

    Most accountability problems in organisations are created by leaders who won’t let go.

    A few years ago, I worked on a small project to build a new client onboarding system. I tried to introduce human-centred design. It failed—not because the idea was flawed, but because leadership couldn’t trust experienced employees to lead the work.

    When leaders hold on too tightly, employees quickly become “difficult,” “resistant,” or simply a problem to be managed. I watched this happen in real time. Yet it could have been very different.

    This experience raises a simple question:

    What conditions genuinely allow accountability to emerge?

    Peter Block offers a compelling answer: inversion.

    Inversion is one of the tools that builds citizenship in workplaces—sitting alongside possibility, positive framing, and the stories leaders tell. But inversion is at the centre of accountability and co-design. It is remarkably simple: give away control to create ownership.

    It is counterintuitive, but deeply human.

    Who is not accountable to their own ideas?
    Who doesn’t like learning on their terms?
    Who doesn’t want to inject their experience into something that matters?

    This is the culture that creates accountability—so often absent in hierarchy and managerialism. It’s not a loss of control; it’s a choice to create the conditions where people can step forward.

    Is there risk? Of course. Sometimes those given inverted responsibility won’t respond. But change and transformation are learning circles built on feedback. At worst, you gain an insight. At best, you unlock capability that was invisible under traditional control.

    If we want accountable workplaces, we need to rethink where responsibility lives—and be willing to invert.

    Where have you seen inversion work (or struggle) in your own organisation?

  • Learning as a Very Human Action

    “To bring value to the participant or the client, we need to design our efforts to support learning at the expense of teaching.”
    — Peter Block, Flawless Consulting

    Last weekend I finished my AFC B Diploma in football coaching — a significant step in my coaching journey. Like my undergraduate social work degree, the course blended practice with theory over 12 months. My “practical” was an undefeated 16/2 Girls team and a development squad of 12/1 Boys.

    Alongside PROSCI — another course I’ve self-funded this year — this has all been about getting better at something I care deeply about. Organisational development, people development, change, transition, and football are things I love.

    There have been wobbles. On the weekend I felt a wave of imposter syndrome. I don’t coach a National Premier League team like some of my fellow candidates, and my consulting work has had its bumps this year. I asked myself: is this continuous learning worth it?

    At 6:45 a.m. on Sunday morning, I felt like giving up.
    I didn’t.

    Because I have a genuine and deep love of learning. Learning has been my companion since forever. It has carried me through the lean times — not necessarily through the certificates (though they’re nice to have), but through the process: getting together with people, sharing experiences, debating ideas, aligning and adjusting with others in the “classroom.”

    This is what Peter Senge and Peter Block mean when they talk about learning as opposed to teaching.

    The B Licence offered a very real metaphor. Most coaches tend to direct — sometimes yell. It can get results, but it also strips the player of their decision-making agency. The same dynamic plays out in the world of work. In change management, good intentions about building capability are often suspended at the altar of the deadline. “We know learning is important, but …”

    Reflect on the impact this has for your employees — and then repeat it over and over again.

    In moments like these, I often come back to a few questions:

    • Am I creating space for others to find their own answers?
    • What might I learn if I resist the urge to control?
    • When was the last time I learned something new about myself through someone else’s experience?

    My challenge over the last few years, and most pointedly this weekend, has been to develop my identity as a coach who creates the conditions for learning. Managing the tension between my urge to control and my desire to question and allow for mistakes.

    Mistakes, after all, are powerful learning tools.
    Identifying them and owning them might be as good as we get as human beings.

    In the end, learning remains the thread that connects everything I care about — people, teams, and the courage to keep showing up.

  • Agency at Work

    Yesterday I met with a change and transformation colleague to discuss networking and job-hunting strategies. The conversation turned to the tension between what agencies say they want in a change manager and what experienced practitioners actually do.

    This tension sits between engaging in transactional work — like preparing a change-impact assessment — and working as a strategic transformation advisor: someone with the knowledge and people skills to work closely with decision-makers and influence the direction of change itself.

    This is no easy task. It asks for maturity, wisdom, trust, and ultimately agency — the learned and supported capacity to make purposeful choices, act with integrity, and influence outcomes in the world we inhabit.

    I first encountered this concept as a second-year social-work student. In Social Work in Practice One, we studied case examples exploring the lives of older women and refugees — both instances of limited agency. Later, as a social worker, I saw this lack of agency first-hand through homelessness and unemployment.

    The fact that agency is now part of the way we describe our work lives feels like a massive leap. Yet it’s a complicated one. Rising personal debt, low rental vacancy rates, and the growth of contract and temporary employment make acting with integrity increasingly difficult.

    If how we show up at work is defined by our insecurity outside of it, we have a problem.

    Seen this way, a decline in agency may be one of the biggest obstacles to truly human-centred change in organisations. This year, I’ve reflected deeply on leadership failures I’ve experienced. Many leaders I worked with did not act with good conscience.

    I can focus on their shortcomings — or I can examine my own role in enabling those behaviours. Peter Block reminds us we are responsible for 50% of any relationship. I can’t control the other half, but I can take responsibility for mine.

    Looking back, especially during organisational change, I can see moments when I failed to challenge or even be curious about the gap between stated intention and behaviour. Doing so takes trust — hard to build quickly — and courage. It takes agency.

    Interestingly, as I became more financially independent, less ambitious about becoming an executive, and more comfortable in my skillset, I began to express greater agency. I questioned transactional change activities and the reflex to serve hierarchy without reflection. Possibly too much. In a temporary role, I was eventually let go — coincidentally after facilitating workshops with executives struggling to lead change congruently.

    That, it seems, is sometimes the price you pay for acting with agency.

    This can easily lead to cynicism about an organisation’s ability to change. When we are trapped in a vortex of transactional activity — from how we recruit to how we implement — we are unlikely to create workplaces, or societies, capable of deep change. We remain, as Ken Rickard and Jason Little describe, in the wash of the waves of change.

    I empathise with those who don’t feel able to speak truth to power. We all carry responsibilities. But for those of us who can express agency, perhaps the call is to set an example — to gently shift the dial in our workplaces and move towards being trusted advisors.

    I’m not suggesting we act without caution or respect. Rather, that we begin — quietly and consistently — to question the alignment between what our leaders say and what they do, especially when the pressure is on.

    That’s where agency begins.
    That’s where transformation takes root.

    What would it look like for you — or your team — to reclaim your agency at work this week?

  • The Lace of Change: What the Victorian Lace Industry Taught Me About Wholeness


    I recently spent five weeks away with my family — two weeks in the Netherlands, the home of my late father-in-law, a week in Ireland, and two weeks in England. One week in England was spent in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, the home of Hastings for at least 400 years.

    The timing wasn’t ideal. I’ve been working to build my consultancy, and the trip seemed to interrupt potential contracts. A week before we left, I was knocked back on a short-term role, and a proposal I’d submitted was deferred with a polite “not now.” I left filled with self-doubt, buoyed only by the sense of perspective a trip like this might bring.

    My grandfather grew up in Nottingham, raised by his grandfather — a silk and lace merchant. I’ve been fascinated by Nottingham since childhood: Robin Hood, Nottingham Forest, Raleigh bikes, Paul Smith — all threads in a story I only half understood.

    My first visit to Nottingham in 1995 coincided with the day I discovered my father had passed away. That morning, we had toured the City Ground. In 2006, my wife and I returned on a cold January week, bridging the hereditary gap between my orphaned grandfather and his grandfather, John Hastings — silk and lace merchant.

    This time we added something more profound. We walked the familiar addresses, the graves, and the Lace Market — and, with the help of AI, I began to join the dots about the kind of man who could raise and educate eight children and his orphaned grandson. Like most systems, the clues revealed themselves through careful, connected study.

    My great-grandfather, who died at 33, had been sent to Ockbrook School in Derbyshire, part of a Moravian settlement — a Protestant offshoot of the Lutheran Church originating in Bohemia. It was a statement of non-conformism against the prevailing Anglican and Catholic institutions, common in the silk and lace industry of the time.

    That evidence — the tombstones, the education of the daughters as teachers and governesses, my grandfather’s place at Nottingham High School — all pointed to the same lineage: people who believed in learning, conscience, and self-made independence.

    Non-conformists were not revolutionaries. They were reformers — practical idealists who valued education, dialogue, and personal integrity over authority. They humanised their faith through discipline, care, and conscience.

    Ever since I was a child, I’ve cared deeply about learning. From school to postgraduate study in social work — itself a form of moral craft — to becoming a lifelong learner, I’ve always been drawn to that same discipline of conscience and reflection.

    Over the years, I’ve wrestled with politics — leaning left, but wary of big systems, whether government or corporate. I once mistook my non-conformism for radicalism, but I’ve come to see that the performative nature of much “radical” change is the opposite of what I value. Real change, like real craft, respects lineage. It builds cooperation. It works with care.

    As I came to understand this, my temperament — and my practice — started to make sense. I wasn’t a disruptor or an evangelist. I was something quieter: a non-conformist who works through dialogue, discipline, and conscience. Someone who believes people matter too much to be treated as instruments of change.

    Over time, this understanding coalesced into four principles — Conscience, Dialogue, Capability, and Learning — my own version of a moral and practical model for change.

    Conscience — The Pattern

    The starting point for all real change.

    What pattern guides your work?

    Are your decisions aligned with what you know is right, or just what is expected?

    How do you hold integrity when the system rewards expedience?

    Conscience gives direction to complexity — it defines the shape of the lace before a single thread is woven.

    Dialogue — The Thread

    Where connection and repair happen.

    Who do you genuinely listen to — and who don’t you?

    What happens when tension appears between threads?

    Can your organisation speak truth without fear?

    Dialogue is how separate strands find strength together.

    Capability — The Fabric

    The systems, habits, and practices that make conscience and dialogue real.

    What structures sustain good intent?

    How do you build capability without control?

    Where do your people learn to lead, not just comply?

    Capability is the weave — the disciplined craft that gives structure and durability.

    Learning — The Renewal

    The act of reflection, humility, and adaptation.

    What have we learned — really learned — from the last season of change?

    Where do we pause to notice the pattern forming?

    How do we stay curious in the face of certainty?

    Learning is how the lace breathes — the quiet work of renewal that keeps it alive.


    In the lace makers of Victorian Nottingham, I found a metaphor for organisational life. Each thread carried its own tension and colour, yet the beauty came from how they were connected — carefully, deliberately, and with mutual dependence.

    Wholeness isn’t simplicity; it’s complexity held together by care.

    That, I now realise, has been the thread running through my life and work all along.

  • Saying Sorry: A Hard Lesson in Leadership

    I’ve been reading Marshall Goldsmith’s What Got You Here Won’t Get You There — a brilliant book about the behaviours that shape a fulfilling life. It’s not an easy read in the sense that it cuts close to the bone. I recognised myself in many of the 20 habits that hold people back: speaking when angry, starting with “no” or “but,” and adding too much value (coaching football being a classic example!).

    The Habits That Hold Us Back

    Goldsmith argues that what got you to where you are today may not take you to the next stage. For me, listening has always been a project. I take it seriously, treat it as a discipline, and subject it to continuous improvement. That doesn’t mean I always get it right. (Just ask my wife.)

    The Power of Saying Sorry

    Another theme that resonated deeply was the act of saying sorry. Goldsmith highlights how much hinges on our ability to acknowledge when we are wrong — without excuses, without conditions. It’s one of the most human things we can do. And people can always sense when an apology is insincere.

    A Hard Lesson

    Years ago, I made what I thought was a clever move. I asked a colleague’s friend a couple of questions, hoping to gain insight into how I might improve my “poor” relationship with that colleague. In reality, it was a remarkably naïve decision. The friend told them, and the already rocky relationship deteriorated further.

    The situation escalated quickly and ended in mediation with our big boss. I was asked to apologise. I did — but without truly understanding the hurt I had caused. Our relationship never recovered. And it didn’t recover because my apology wasn’t sincere.

    Listening Before Apologising

    The lesson was clear. Apologies are only powerful when they are accompanied by a genuine effort to understand the hurt you’ve caused. That can only happen after you’ve listened with intent. Without that, “sorry” is just a word.

    Moving Forward

    In my working life, I’ve received very few apologies. I’ve given many — and I likely owe more. But I know this: a genuine, well-crafted sorry doesn’t weaken you. It moves you — and those around you — forward.

  • The Satir Change Curve

    Learning as a Student

    I regularly reflect on my time as a social work student in the early 1990s. It was a wonderful period of learning and discovery. The course was groundbreaking in its use of experimental ways of learning—placements, reflective journalling, guest speakers, and video recording of group work.

    Tony Vinson’s work in Wilful Obstruction—his experiences as the Corrective Services Commissioner—is a great case study into change and transition in the NSW Public Sector. Vinson’s work as a change leader and prison reformer was decades ahead of its time.

    The key takeaway from the course was the need to link the individual or group to the broader system. This approach provided a framework to guide interactions in both a group and individual context. It also worked in reverse, informing the social worker about the nature of the interaction they were having with the individual or group in context. It seems very simple, but at the time it was a great innovation.

    Discovering Virginia Satir

    In all my time as a social worker, I had not heard of Virginia Satir. That may have had something to do with a bias towards British and European social theory. I came across the Satir model through the Lean Change network and by reading Gerry Weinberg. Daryl Conner has also mentioned the huge influence Virginia Satir had on his career in change management. This is unsurprising, because social work is built on supporting individuals and small groups as they navigate complex systems.

    The Satir Change Model Explained

    The Satir model consists of three distinct phases: late-stage status quo, chaos, and new status quo. Each phase is bounded by events.

    Late-stage status quo is disrupted by a foreign element—an event that either forces the system into chaos or prompts an attempt to return to the old ways of operating. Chaos is a challenging period where energy and output are often low, because the system is searching for a new way of coping or working.

    Experimentation is crucial during this time. It is through experimentation that an innovating idea emerges, propelling the system forward into a new status quo.

    My Personal Connection

    Personally, the Satir model resonates with me. The family dynamics I grew up in bounced around in late-stage status quo for many years before the foreign element of my father’s job loss plunged the family into chaos and, ultimately, over time into a new status quo. More recently, my journey from salaried employee to change consultant has loosely followed the Satir change curve.

    Applying the Model in Practice

    This week I used the Satir model in two facilitated workshops.

    In the first, with a start-up, I used the model to support the organisation to develop a unifying story from individual stories of late-stage status quo and chaos. Following the Satir model in our storytelling delivered some profound—and galvanising—insights into the innovative idea at the heart of this company.

    In the second workshop, the model was used to help the organisation understand both individual and group responses to change. This more descriptive journey of the change curve, and the power of experimentation during chaos, provided the participants with many light-bulb moments.

    Closing Reflection

    The versatility and efficacy of this model is profound because it is steeped in thousands of personal and group stories. It remains one of the most human and practical frameworks I’ve ever used in guiding change.

  • Balancing the Art and Science of Change

    Reflections inspired by Ken Rickard and Jason Little

    This chapter is emerging as one of my favourites, as it captures the balance required to be an effective change agent.

    Last week, I met with a mentor who suggested I’m more of an artist than a scientist. Her reflection helped me realise that my change practice is deeply grounded in years of experience and shaped by a strong identity as a social worker. I tend to prioritise people and the systems they operate in as my primary frame of reference.

    That conversation stayed with me as I read this chapter. It prompted me to reconsider how I see myself in the field. The truth is — I value science too. I’m drawn to frameworks and big ideas. Tools are not lost on me either.

    So the question became: how have I shown up in practice?

    Most recently, I was involved in a large-scale organisational transformation that significantly impacted many employees — people either lost their jobs or had their roles fundamentally altered.

    I entered that project as an artist. I brought with me a strong sense of self, built through years of service in the public sector. I could anticipate what people were about to feel. This came from a worldview shaped by my social work background — one centred on social justice, the dignity of work, and co-design principles.

    And yet, I also understood the political imperatives. I could see the broader drivers behind the change and the implications for individuals navigating their own transitions.

    Where I came unstuck was in reconciling my values with the direction set by the program director. The change management approach lacked coherence — lurching from one model or trend to the next. Capability was seen as a matter of certification, not practice. Authentic conversations were rare. The work of change was reduced to superficial tools and templates.

    This was a shame, given the very real, life-altering consequences for people affected by the program.

    Not all change can be transparent. Some will be shrouded in secrecy and have adverse impacts. But that doesn’t mean we can’t bring both art and science to our practice. If anything, it makes it more important.

    What it asks of us is to be authentic about our approach to change — to choose the right dimension for the right context, and to honour both the human and systemic aspects of transition.

    Like most things, it boils down to balancing art and science against the context you are working in.

    How can I help you and your business?

    If you’re navigating complex change, I can support your organisation by bringing both the art and science of change into balance.

    Here’s how I work with clients:

    • Act as a trusted advisor to leaders, offering guidance grounded in the Four Dimensions of Change — people, systems, tools, and strategy.
    • Facilitate workshops that align leaders and employees around a shared approach to change that feels both grounded and workable.
    • Host regular check-in sessions to track alignment and coherence — making sure your strategy remains connected to real-world experience.
    • Introduce tools that are appropriate to your context — not overwhelming, but useful and usable.
    • Draw on theory that clarifies rather than complicates — frameworks that guide, not intimidate.
    • Conduct change impact assessments that generate data to inform how best to apply and balance the four dimensions.

    If you’re seeking support to lead meaningful, people-centred change — I’d be glad to talk.