Changemaking: Tactics and Resources for Managing Organizational Change

In the years since my first management experience running a manufacturing plant in the north of England, I've experienced and led major changes in organizational culture and structure. I’ve worked with clients around the world, large and small, for-profits and non-profits, government and private sector. As an educator, I developed and taught an Exec MBA class in the management of change and had the opportunity to document and codify some of what I've learned.

These years of working with change have provided me with broad experience of the tactics, strategies, and processes that enable change initiatives to succeed—as well as a firsthand view of the many pitfalls that can derail them. And while every initiative is different, and every organizational culture is unique, there is a consistent set of themes, issues, and imperatives that run through almost every change process.

We must establish and maintain clarity about the purposes and process. We need to measure what happens and evaluate results. The stakeholders – those most affected by the change, and most able to influence it – need to be fully engaged. Appropriate resources – people, systems and tools – must be in place. Supporting processes (such as compensation, IT, and training) must be adapted and aligned to the change. Leadership at every level must be prepared and enabled to support the change process. And communication must be sustained up, down and across the organization.

My first two books on this subject were Changemaking and The Changemaking Checklists. These two are now merged into a single volume, significantly updated and revised, and with new content addressing developments in technology and the advent of AI-based tools. These are having a major impact on working patterns and on the way change is planned, implemented, and managed. The focus of the book continues to be on execution, with tools and resources that can be adapted and applied to every phase of a change process. The second edition of Changemaking consolidates the content of the two earlier change-related books, and replaces both.

I live on on Decatur Island, one of the San Juan Islands of Puget Sound. My interests include cooking, sailing, hiking, tennis, writing, travel, reading, and gardening; and time with my family. In 2010, I managed to combine more than half of these pursuits in a sailing trip across the Atlantic Ocean from St. Lucia to the Azores. I was responsible for provisioning and cooking on the voyage, and for a daily blog. My first book, The Galley Slave's Handbook, was based on that experience. I now focus on writing and publishing through ChangeStart Press, including (as well as GSH) the Changemaking books. I also work in a quite different genre, children's fiction, with the 2020 publication of The Hidden Triceratops, followed in 2021 by the sequel The Tangled Pteranodon.