April 2, 2013
(4) COMMENTS
In my last post, I posed a serious question to serious practitioners: What are you up to? In other words, is there something else you are hoping to achieve through your work above making a living and fulfilling your professional obligations? I wouldn’t ask you to share something as personal as what you are up to without doing the same myself, so in this post, I will explain my passion—what I try to use my change practice to advance.
March 26, 2013
(4) COMMENTS
Is there something you are hoping to achieve through your work above making a living and fulfilling your professional obligations? In this first post of my series, What are you up to?, I pose this question so we might consider what is behind, underneath, and wrapped around the professional undertakings we engage in as change practitioners.
October 23, 2012
NO COMMENTS
Change practitioners must function as provocateurs when the need arises. If you’re not willing to do that, you’re failing to practice your craft. Either you don’t know enough about this profession to recognize what you are not doing, or you lack the courage to perform as you know you should. (If you think this is too harsh of an indictment, please refer to my last post.)
In this post, I highlight some of the things that tend to keep us from functioning as provocateurs when we should. I also address what we can do about them.
October 9, 2012
(1) COMMENT
This is the final post in my series on victimization. The victimization syndrome can be compared to a virus that has infected not only clients, but our profession as well. Transformational change intensifies existing victimization and brings any latent tendencies to the surface. No one—advocates, agents, targets, or sponsors—is immune from its destructive power. In this post, I review some perspectives I’ve found helpful with clients, other practitioners, and myself as we all contend with our own vulnerability to victimization.
October 2, 2012
(1) COMMENT
In the two previous posts of this series on victimization, I wrote about the negative impact it can have on people and organizations. Here, I describe what happens when victimization surfaces during a change initiative, and the ways it effects our profession.
September 19, 2012
(2) COMMENTS
Many challenges and roadblocks hinder the successful execution of major change, but few rival the obstructive power unleashed when people act as—or allow themselves to be treated as—victims. Victimization is a disease that destroys the confidence a person needs to sustain a transformative journey, and it has reached epidemic proportions among not only targets, but sponsors and agents as well. In this series, I will discuss the basics of the disease, how it breeds in work environments, how change exacerbates the syndrome, and how we can limit victim tendencies in ourselves and others.
July 31, 2012
(1) COMMENT
When professional facilitators of change use the term “contracting,” they aren’t referencing a legally binding document. Instead, the word describes the process used when two or more people reach agreement on their expectations about a situation, and each other, in a serious manner…that is, pursued carefully and reinforced by consequences. In this post, I outline the basic principles involved.
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