Here are three provocative questions that emerge from this Change Signal conversation with Kate Lye:

Why do executive teams excel at functional expertise but falter at systems thinking?

Can CEOs transform their organizations without first transforming themselves?

What happens if change leaders never secure permission to call out executive sabotage?

For decades, Kate Lye has watched change programs fade into irrelevance, and she knows why. As a performance partner to CEOs, she’s seen how even the sharpest executives unintentionally sabotage transformation by clinging to their comfort zones.

The real obstacle isn’t employee resistance. It’s leaders who mistake cheerleading for leadership, or strategic talk for actual work.

Lye explains how to spot the moment when a change effort quietly slips from priority one to priority nowhere. She argues that contracting conversations with CEOs — where you establish the right to challenge and hold them accountable — aren’t optional. They’re essential.

Most provocatively, she points out that while executives thrive in functional expertise, they struggle with systems thinking. That’s why they so often hand off the heavy lifting of change to others while reserving for themselves the figurehead role.

If you’re tired of watching transformation initiatives stall, Kate’s insights will shift how you see executive engagement. This isn’t about winning buy-in — it’s about getting leaders to own the role they play in whether change succeeds or fails. 

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 the right place.

***

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Here are three provocative questions that arise from this Change Signal conversation with Todd Kashdan:

 Are you cooperating too much for change to succeed?

 What personal costs are you willing to pay for principled rebellion?

 Why do people hide their real beliefs just to fit in?

My friend Todd Kashdan, psychology professor and author of The Art of Insubordination, brings some unexpected wisdom about what it really takes to lead transformational change in organizations.

Todd argues that early cooperation actually destroys the cognitive diversity you need for breakthrough solutions. Instead of seeking harmony, change leaders should encourage criticality, independence, and productive conflict.

But here’s the trade-off nobody talks about: effective insubordination means accepting real personal costs — hits to your wellbeing, relationships, and peace of mind in service of meaning and purpose.

The most powerful insight? Change leaders can amplify unheard voices by leveraging their organization’s “socially attractive” people — and by separating ideas from their originators to overcome bias.

If you’re tired of change initiatives that revert to the mean, this conversation offers a fresh perspective on principled rebellion. Todd shows why being a transformational leader sometimes means being the rebel your organization needs, even when it’s uncomfortable.

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 emerge from this Change Signal conversation with Michael Norton:

Can we ever escape ritual?

Why is ambiguous loss harder to process than clear grief?

How can we honour the past while creating a new identity?

Most change leaders assume ritual is all incense and corporate retreats. Harvard Business School professor Michael Norton sees it differently.

His research shows that the most powerful organizational rituals aren’t the big, top-down ones imposed by leadership. They’re the small, everyday practices teams invent for themselves — like who brings lunch on which day, or clicking emojis at the start of Zoom calls.

Norton also introduces the idea of ambiguous loss: the grief we feel when something hasn’t clearly ended but has fundamentally changed. Think of keeping old business cards from a company that no longer exists. This kind of loss is everywhere during organizational change — yet it’s rarely acknowledged.

The answer isn’t to erase all the old or dictate the new. Like blended families inventing fresh holiday traditions, successful change preserves meaningful parts of the past while creating new rituals for the future.

If you’re leading transformation and wondering why people resist seemingly small changes, this conversation will reshape how you think about the human side of organizational 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, this is where you seek and find modern change mastery.

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Here are three big questions that Loran Nordgren asks in the question for modern change mastery:

Are you accidentally creating resistance by making your ideas sound too revolutionary?

What if the anxieties you're avoiding are exactly what you need to address?

Why does pushing harder on change often make things worse?

Loran Nordgren, a behavioural theory professor at Northwestern's Kellogg School, flips change management on its head. Instead of focusing on making ideas more appealing, he argues we should be removing psychological friction.

His "fuel versus friction" framework reveals why breakthrough changes often fail. The issue isn't that people don't see the value — it's that invisible barriers are holding good ideas back.

You'll discover why framing change as "evolution" works better than "revolution." Loran shares practical tactics like the South by Southwest email templates that doubled attendance without flashy marketing.

Most provocatively, he suggests that many of our change intuitions don't just fail — they actually amplify resistance. This conversation challenges how you think about urgency, buy-in, and the role of anxiety in organizational change.

If you're tired of change initiatives stalling despite obvious benefits, this episode offers a different lens for diagnosing what's really going wrong.

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

***

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Here’s what Larissa Conte asks us about modern change mastery:

Is “power” something that’s learned and usable?

What might happen if we focused on possibilities rather than problems?

How can you expand your ability to handle more success “wattage”?

My guest Larissa Conte calls herself a "power alchemist" — which will either intrigue you or make you roll your eyes. Either way, stick with this conversation.

Larissa argues that "power literacy" is the skeleton key that unlocks every other leadership skill. She distinguishes between "shadow power" (the stuff that creates headwinds and dysfunction) and "power that serves the whole" (the energy that creates flow and momentum).

Here's what's provocative: she suggests that as change leaders, we're often unconsciously sabotaging our own efforts. We resist not just threats to our ego, but also being truly seen and acknowledged for our capabilities.

The practical insight? If you want transformation to stick, you need to give at least 51% of your focus to what you want to create, not what you're trying to fix.

This isn't your typical change management conversation. Larissa brings embodied wisdom to organizational transformation, helping you recognize when you're creating headwinds versus flow in your change initiatives.

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 big questions that arise from this Change Signal conversation with Chris Taylor: 

Are your high-stakes moments sabotaging skill development?

Why practice once when you could daily?

What if home practice beats workplace training?

My friend Chris Taylor, founder of Actionable, has spent eighteen years obsessing over what Bob Sutton calls the "knowing-doing gap." Why do people get inspired in training rooms but then struggle to change their actual behaviour?

Chris shares a simple but profound matrix that reveals why so much workplace development creates "brittle commitments" that shatter under pressure. The problem isn't the content — it's that we're asking people to try new behaviours only when the stakes are highest and stress hormones are flooding their systems.

His data from 7,000 programs shows something counterintuitive: the secret isn't better training content, it's turning situational commitments into foundational daily practice. Think of it like sports—professionals don't practice when they're playing.

The most powerful insight? When people practice workplace skills in their personal relationships, success rates double again because the meaning deepens and opportunities multiply.

If you're leading change initiatives, this conversation will shift how you think about embedding new behaviours in your organization.

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 big questions that arise from this Change Signal conversation with Scott D. Anthony: 

What's systematically killing curiosity in your organization?

Can you hold your team in that sweet spot between comfort and chaos? And

Are your excuses actually avoiding the real work of transformation?

Scott D. Anthony, Clinical Professor of Business Administration at Tuck and innovation strategist, challenges how we think about change leadership in large organizations. Most companies lose their curiosity, focusing only on whether spreadsheet numbers add up — a pretty boring question.

The real work is building adaptive capacity through deliberate discomfort. You need people uncomfortable enough to learn but not so uncomfortable that they shut down or find scapegoats.

Scott shares the remarkable DBS Bank transformation story, from Singapore's lowest-ranked bank to globally recognized innovator. Their secret weapon? The Gandalf scholarship program that generated 30x returns on learning investments.

And here's where it gets interesting: successful leaders develop paradoxical thinking. They perceive danger while staying optimistic, allocate resources while avoiding rigidity.

Here’s where he gets helpfully provocative: When leaders say, "I wish I could, but my shareholders won't let me," that's just avoiding hard work. Every organization claims its situation is uniquely difficult — it's not.

Change management isn't about finding better excuses. It's about building curiosity, managing productive discomfort, and developing the mental agility to hold competing truths.

Change Signal. For transformational leaders seeking modern change mastery. Cut through the blather, the BS, and the noise to find the good stuff that works.

***

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Here are three big questions that arise from this Change Signal conversation with Lisa Reynolds:

Are you actually enabling resistance?

When did you last grieve something?

How many individual changes are you actually managing?

Lisa Reynolds leads change management at Christus Health, where her small team punches way above their weight across a massive healthcare system. She's learned that change work is fundamentally about relationships, not processes.

Her approach flips conventional wisdom. Instead of treating resistance as the enemy, she sees it as valuable feedback that can be mitigated by 50% through proactive people strategies. Rather than rolling out enterprise-wide initiatives, she focuses on the individual human experience of walking through change.

The conversation gets delightfully practical. Lisa shares everything from "potty training" (posting flyers in bathroom stalls for busy nurses) to the symbolic power of cutting down dead trees on day one of acquisitions. She reveals why face-to-face communication trumps system emails every time.

But it's her philosophy that shines brightest: change is humanistic at its core. You can't bypass the relationship-building work, and you can't skip the grief process when people leave familiar systems behind.

This is change management stripped of corporate speak and grounded in what actually works with real humans.

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

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Julie Dirksen’s three key insights about modern change mastery:

most training fails because it ignores immediate relevance;

organizational change temporarily destroys people's competence and professional identity;

corporate learning only addresses logic while ignoring the emotional brain that actually drives decisions.

Julie Dirksen joins me to dissect why most corporate training feels like "high school, but worse." She's spent years figuring out how to design learning that actually changes behavior, not just fills heads with information.

Her printer repair experiment reveals why engagement isn't about jazzing up content—it's about timing and immediate application. When your printer's broken and you need it fixed, suddenly that boring YouTube video becomes fascinating.

But here's what really stuck with me: change doesn't just alter what people do, it shatters who they are. Take someone who's unconsciously competent at their job and force them to learn new processes, and you've just broken their professional identity.

Julie introduces the elephant-rider metaphor to explain why purely rational training approaches fail. Your logical brain might understand why change is necessary, but your emotional, experiential brain—the elephant—often has other plans.

If you're leading transformation efforts and wondering why smart people resist obviously good ideas, this conversation will shift how you think about supporting behavior change in organizations.

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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🎧 A new episode every week (and sometimes two!)

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Here are three big questions that arise from this Change Signal conversation with Dan Cable: 

Are you leading with fear-based management?;

How much "freedom within the frame" are you offering? and

How do you use dopamine to best fuel your change efforts?

Dan Cable, Professor of Organizational Behaviour at London Business School, argues that as the world moves faster, leaders can no longer afford to use fear as the primary tool to drive change.

The conversation explores how neuroscience reveals what actually works in transformation. Cable introduces his "seeking system" concept — a part of our brain that's naturally wired to love learning and minimize future surprise.

You'll discover why organizations systematically beat curiosity out of people, even though curiosity is exactly what they need for change. Cable shares practical examples, including a fascinating KLM social media experiment that cost just €10,000 but generated over a million visits.

The discussion challenges conventional wisdom about control, compliance, and execution. Instead of trying to turn humans into robots, Cable suggests we embrace the messy, unpredictable, emotional reality of how people actually thrive during change.

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

***

WHEN YOU’RE READY

🎧 A new episode every week (and sometimes two!)

The Change Signal newsletter. Short, practical, weekly

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