Three key insights from Anne Gotte: change management is as outdated as "personnel" organizations must diagnose their change allergies before attempting transformation; and leaders need to embrace clumsy imperfection while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 transformation. She's worked at Bumble, Ecolab, and General Mills, collecting scars and wisdom along the way.

This conversation challenges the traditional playbook. Anne argues that "decree change" — where executives design solutions in isolation, announce them broadly, then expect magic — as well and truly reached its expiration date.

Instead, she advocates for building ongoing change capacity rather than managing episodic projects. Her approach starts with uncomfortable questions: Who are we today? What makes any change difficult for us? How do our systems contradict our change story?

The discussion explores why change feels clumsy (spoiler: it's supposed to), how to honour uncertainty while providing clarity, and why slow can actually be fast. Anne's insights about getting comfortable being uncomfortable offer a different path forward for change leaders tired of pretending transformation should feel orderly and predictable.

This is change leadership for grown-ups who've learned that the mess is actually the work.

Change Signal. Cut through the blather, the BS, and the noise to find the good stuff that works in change and transformation.

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Here are three big insights that emerge from this Change Signal conversation with Hahrie Han:

Hahrie Han, political scientist at Johns Hopkins University and author of How Organizations Develop Activists and Undivided, has spent her career studying how people build power that lasts. She brings a sharp, human perspective on what drives genuine participation and why small, intentional acts often change systems more than sweeping plans.

The conversation explores why engagement depends less on ease and more on meaning, how “radical belonging” can transform even divided communities, and how leaders can use small, safe failures to build confidence and agency across teams.

You’ll also hear practical tools for turning involvement into influence — designing scaffolding that helps people learn from risk and own their results.

If you’re leading transformation, culture, or change projects in a big organization, this conversation offers fresh, grounded insight into how participation turns into durable power.

Change Signal. Cut through the blather, the BS, and the noise to find the good stuff that works in change. This is the podcast for transformational leaders seeking modern change mastery.

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Here are three provocative questions that arise from this Change Signal conversation with Helen Bevan: 

Helen Bevan has spent decades leading large-scale transformation inside the NHS, and she brings that rare blend of deep experience and fresh thinking. She makes a compelling case that the real levers of change aren’t the ones we normally obsess over—plans, resources, or methodologies—but the relational fabric that holds a system together.

We talk about belonging as a core condition for change, and why the best leaders know how to help people both “belong” and “unbelong” as the system shifts. Helen also shares the surprising results of a major five-year transformation experiment, where social capital — not expertise or investment — predicted which organizations moved forward and which fell behind.

And we explore agency: why you can’t give it, why people have to build it themselves, and how leaders can create the routines that make that possible. If you’re navigating complexity, leading transformation, or trying to spark change in a large organization, this conversation offers practical insight into how change actually travels through a system.

Change Signal. Where transformational change leaders seek and find modern change wisdom. Cut through the blather, the BS, and the noise to find the good stuff that works.

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Here are three questions this Change Signal conversation asks:

In this episode, I talk with Cate Hall about agency — what it is, why it matters, and why it’s more complicated than simply telling people to “take ownership.” Cate defines agency as the ability to see and act on degrees of freedom other people overlook, which is a powerful idea for anyone leading change, transformation, or large-scale organizational work.

We get into how leaders can become more agentic without becoming reckless, especially inside complex organizations where not everything can be an experiment. Cate offers the idea of “selective agency”: finding the places where iteration, risk, and movement are actually possible.

And then things get especially interesting. If you want more agency from your people, you have to tolerate them doing things imperfectly. And if you want more agency in the system, you also have to ask: agency in service of what?

Change Signal. Cut through the blather, the BS, and the noise to find the good stuff that works in change. If you’re a transformational leader seeking modern change mastery, you’re in exactly the right place.

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Here are three questions from this Change Signal conversation: 

In this episode, I talk with Brian Evergreen, author of Autonomous Transformation, about what change leadership looks like when AI is moving faster than most organizations can think.

Brian makes a wonderfully useful distinction: your job is probably not to become an AI expert. Your job is to understand value — for your customers, your organization, and the wider system — and then partner with the right expertise to create it.

We explore why “AI-first” can be as silly as saying “hammer-first,” and why autonomous transformation needs a different playbook from digital transformation. The work starts with vision, not tools.

Brian also shares a practical way to map change: put the vision at the top, ask “what would have to be true?”, and make the strategy visible enough for people to move with it.

For senior leaders working on change, transformation, AI strategy, or large-scale organizational change, this is a grounded, clarifying conversation about building the future without drowning in the noise.

Change Signal. Cut through the blather, the BS, and the noise to find the good stuff that works in change. If you’re a transformational leader seeking modern change mastery, you’re in exactly the right place.

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Here are three questions that arise from this Change Signal conversation: 

In this episode, I talk with Jana Werner about why so much change management still feels like something done to people, rather than with them.

Jana argues that large organizations often hire smart, capable people — and then design transformation in ways that sideline their judgment, curiosity, and ownership. We explore why top-down change may feel faster at first, but often becomes slower because it doesn’t stick.

We also get into one of the trickier questions in change leadership: how do you build genuine agency? Jana’s view is that ownership has to be both given and taken — and many organizations have quietly trained people out of taking it.

This conversation is practical, thoughtful, and nicely skeptical of the giant transformation program. If you lead change in a large organization, Jana offers a more human and more usable alternative: clarify purpose, remove friction, start smaller, and let change become a habit woven into the work.

Change Signal. Cut through the blather, the BS, and the noise to find the good stuff that works in change. If you’re a transformational leader seeking modern change mastery, you’re in exactly the right place.

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Here are three questions that arise from this Change Signal conversation:

In this episode, I talk with Alex Budak, UC Berkeley faculty member and author of Becoming a Changemaker, about how change leadership actually spreads through an organization.

We explore why people wait too long to claim the role of changemaker, and why permission often has to be taken rather than granted. Alex makes the case that change management is not a heroic solo act — it’s a team sport, built through values, courage, early champions, and the willingness to let other people shape the work.

There’s practical wisdom here for anyone leading transformation in a large organization: find the 25 percent who can shift the norm, stay clear on the why while loosening your grip on the how, and stop making yourself the hub where every decision has to land.

It’s a conversation about agency, courage, control, and what it takes to help more people step into change.

Change Signal. Cut through the blather, the BS, and the noise to find the good stuff that works in change. If you’re a transformational leader seeking modern change mastery, you’re in exactly the right place.

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This Change Signal conversation with Peter Schein asks three questions:

• What doesn’t your change plan know?

• Where is context quietly defeating content?

• Are we building systems so perfect that people no longer need to be good?

Peter, co-author with Ed Schein of Humble Inquiry, Humble Consulting, and Humble Leadership, brings a wonderfully useful challenge to change management and transformation work. He says humble leadership isn’t about being modest; it’s about being vulnerable to what you don’t know, and curious enough to discover what the room already knows.

We talk about why change leaders get seduced by content — the strategy, the model, the deck, the eight steps — while missing the context that determines whether any of it will actually land.

We also explore relationship mapping, “soak time” in meetings, and why trust is not some nice-to-have garnish sprinkled on top of organizational change.

For senior leaders leading change in large, complex organizations, this is about clarity over certainty, context over content, and the practical, human work of being good to each other.

Change Signal. Cut through the blather, the BS, and the noise to find the good stuff that works in change. If you’re a transformational leader seeking modern change mastery, you’re in exactly the right place.

***

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Three questions sit at the heart of this conversation:

• Are you starting with the technology, or the purpose?• What harm are you creating by moving too fast — or too slowly?• Have you designed the change people actually experience?

Kate O’Neill is a tech humanist, strategist, and author of What Matters Next. In this Change Signal episode, we talk about AI, digital transformation, and the choices change leaders face when the world keeps speeding up.

Kate challenges one of the loudest instincts in organizations right now: “We need an AI strategy.” Maybe. But not first.

First comes purpose: what the business is here to do, how it creates value, what kind of experience it wants to design, and what data helps leaders make better decisions.

We also explore Kate’s useful distinction between the harms of action and the harms of inaction — the trouble we create by moving too fast, and the debt we create by waiting too long. If you lead change or transformation in a large organization, this is a practical conversation about pace, purpose, and making change more human.

***

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Three questions sit at the heart of this conversation: 

Are you asking people to make real choices, or just comply?

What past are you accidentally disrespecting?

Is your change work actually part of the work?

Roger Martin is one of the clearest thinkers I know on strategy, leadership, and transformation. In this Change Signal episode, we get into why so many change efforts stall, not because people are lazy or resistant, but because they’ve been given a vague or demeaning job: “go execute this.”

Roger offers a better way: choice chartering. Give people the shape of the answer you need, not the answer itself. Help them understand the strategic choice, then ask them to make the next set of choices for their part of the organization.

We also explore agency, psychological safety, vision, and why respecting the old system may be the key to changing it. If you lead change in a large organization, this is a practical, thoughtful conversation about how transformation really happens.

Change Signal. Cut through the blather, the BS, and the noise to find the good stuff that works in change. If you’re a transformational leader seeking modern change mastery, you’re in exactly the right place.

***

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