Tag Archives: change tools

What is Human-Centered Change?

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Arriving into the profession of change management and leadership honestly, having led organizational change programs for world-beating organizations like Wunderman and Microsoft, I’m excited to help others take their change efforts to new heights using new tools.

What is Human-Centered Change?

People Are the Heartbeat of Change

It should go without saying that if anything should be human-centered, it should be change. But, ten years ago, and even to a great extent today, the practice of change management is still very much process-centric instead of human-centric.

Worse yet, digital transformations are unfortunately often technology-centric instead of human-centric.

Because of this mismatch between what’s needed to plan and execute change successfully and the tools available to organizational change management (OCM) professionals, I decided to create a Human-Centered Change methodology. At its core is the Change Planning Toolkit and my latest book Charting Change explains how to put the 70+ visual, collaborative tools and frameworks into practice.

Only by using the more visual and collaborative methods that humans prefer can you give yourself the opportunity to literally get everyone all on the same page for change, and to beat the 70% change failure rate.

Are People Ready for Change?

Too often we run head long into yet another change initiative without considering what the levels of change readiness and change saturation are across the organization’s various human, financial and physical resources.

PCC Change Readiness Framework

To help people identify whether the people AND the organization are ready for change I created the PCC Change Readiness Framework. It starts with the organization’s shared understanding history and context and then helps you evaluate various components of:

  1. Psychology
  2. Capability
  3. Capacity

Exploring these three areas in detail will allow you to uncover many of the human elements that not only will determine whether your change effort will be a success or not, but that you will need to create a plan to manage.

Business Model Canvas and Change Planning Canvas

What does Human-Centered Change look like?

Visual, collaborative tools like the Empathy Map, Business Model Canvas, Service Design Blueprint, Lean Canvas, Value Proposition Canvas, Experience Maps, and even Customer Journey Maps have laid the groundwork for a more powerful modern way of working that leverages the whole brain of individuals and groups:

  1. Cognitive (thinking)
  2. Conative (doing)
  3. Affective (feeling)

And where these tools all represent the beginning of a visual, collaborative endeavor to create change, they are missing the tools to help plan for and execute the changes that are being proposed.

Outcome-Driven Change Framework by Braden Kelley

This is where the Change Planning Toolkit comes in. It has been designed with the Change Planning Canvas™ at its core to feel familiar to those already using the aforementioned tools and empower teams to take the next steps on their journey to be successful:

  1. Change Initiatives
  2. Digital Transformation
  3. Design Thinking
  4. Service Design
  5. Experience Design
  6. Customer Experience (CX) Improvement Efforts
  7. Projects (make sure you also get the Visual Project Charter™)
  8. Innovation and Intrapreneurship
  9. Startup Creation
  10. New Product Development (NPD)

What About Other Change Methodologies like ProSci ADKAR or the ACMP Standard for Change Management?

The human-centered change methodology is informed by the very best thinking in the various change disciplines to date, and consistent with other methodologies like ProSci’s ADKAR, PMI’s PMBOK, and the Association of Change Management Professionals (ACMP) Standard for Change Management. These other methodologies have their uses, and in fact I’ve created a poster-size visualization of the ACMP Standard:

ACMP Standard Visualization

But Human-Centered Change goes beyond these process-focused methodologies to create more visual and collaborative approaches for change leaders to use in planning and executing productive change programs.

How to Begin Practicing Human-Centered Change

The Human-Centered Change methodology will help you beat the 70% change failure rate, create more efficient and effective change initiatives (and even projects), and accelerate your pace of successful change in order to keep up with the accelerating pace of change all around us and to be more nimble, agile, and responsive than your competition.

There is a simple three step process for people to familiarize themselves with the Change Planning Toolkit’s 70+ tools used with the Human-Centered Change methodology:

  1. 10 free tools available to download now
  2. 26 free tools when you buy the book
  3. 70+ tools when you license the toolkit

I’ve invested more than $1 million into the Change Planning Toolkit so you don’t have to, and so you can leverage this investment to gain all of the benefits above while also saving yourself thousands or millions of dollars in consulting fees – every year.


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What is Change Management?

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What is Change Management?

Organizational Change Management (OCM) is an incredibly important part of management science, but a very immature part.

So immature in fact that as the profession began to coalesce the unfortunate decision was made to anchor on the term change management to describe the profession.

This is an unfortunate choice because IT professionals, construction professionals, and others had already been using the change management term for many years to mean the careful tracking and execution of changes from a steady state, tracking of change orders and contract addendums, etc.

So, what is change management in an enterprise context?

My Definition of Change Management

“Change Management manages the change activities necessary to achieve the change objectives.”

Simple and straight to the point…

What Five Things Are Key to Change Management?

But Change Management is but one of five change practice areas in my Five Keys to Successful Change framework that each require focused attention.

Five Keys to Successful Change

Change Management NOT a Subset of Project Management

It is also problematic that many business professionals mistakenly view Change Management as a subset of Project Management, but we should really practice it the other way around. I represent this visually in another of my change frameworks – Architecting the Organization for Continuous Change – which is available along with the Five Keys to Successful Change in the Ten Free Tools I make available from the 70+ tools of the Change Planning Toolkit™ at the core of my Human-Centered Change methodology.

The other components in the Five Keys to Successful Change framework are equally important and even less mature in their professional practice, and the entire profession suffers from a lack of effective tools, making it less than surprising that 70% of change initiatives fail.

Where Can I Get Change Management Tools?

It is because of this lack of tool availability that I created the Human-Centered Change methodology and its growing library of 70+ tools captured in the Change Planning Toolkit™. I’ve then explained how to use all of these tools in my book Charting Change along with a lot of important change best practices and new thinking for professionals, not just from myself but from a carefully selected roster of guest experts.

ACMP Standard for Change Management Visualization

What is Involved in Change Management?

If you’re not sure what change management is and you’d like to know all of the subcomponents, I’ve created a nice poster-size visualization of the Association of Change Management Professionals’ (ACMP) Standard for Change Management methodology that is available as part of the ten free downloads and separately as a 35″ x56″ poster that you can print on a plotter and hang up on your wall.

You’ll see that the Association of Change Management Professionals (ACMP) visualization identifies five core practice areas:

  1. Evaluate Change Impact and Organizational Readiness
  2. Formulate the Change Management Strategy
  3. Develop the Change Management Plan
  4. Execute the Change Management Plan
  5. Complete the Change Management Effort

What Are The Typical Change Management Activities?

Under each of these headings you have a lot of the typical change management activities like:

  • Sponsorship
  • Organizational Readiness
  • Communications
  • Stakeholder Management
  • Training
  • Etc.

Change Management is again but one of five keys to successful change, and is the one that focuses on the productive execution of a well crafted change plan by passionate change leaders.

But, each of these headings and practice areas deserve multiple posts by themselves and so we’ll save those details for another day.

In the meantime, grab your Ten Free Tools and check out my book Charting Change to learn more.

Architecting the Organization for Change Management


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Going Beyond the Business Model Canvas

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Going Beyond the Business Model Canvas

For decades when business people and aspiring entrepreneurs came up with an idea and became serious about commercializing it, they would, by default, create a business plan. Anyone who has ever created a business plan knows they are a LOT of work. And as any innovator knows, most ideas turn out to be garbage. As a result, the creation of most business plans ends up being a waste of time.

All of this wasted time and money in the universes of both corporate innovation and startups was definitely an area of opportunity.

This pain has been solved in part by the Business Model Canvas created by Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, the Lean Canvas created by Ash Maurya, and by minor variations created by others.

Purpose of the Business Model Canvas

The purpose of both at their core is the same. The Business Model Canvas and the Lean Canvas seek to help entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs and innovators quickly explore the desirability, feasibility and viability of their ideas in a more visual and collaborative way, while also supporting much quicker iterations and revisions to both the value proposition and its path to market.

Where a business plan may take weeks to create, a Business Model Canvas or Lean Canvas can be created in an afternoon.

Where a business plan is often created by one person and revised by others in a serial manner, a Business Model Canvas or Lean Canvas is a group activity, informed by a collection of diverse perspectives and experiences, and challenged, evolved and revised in a real-time, parallel manner.

What excites me most as someone who conducts workshops all around the world and teaches people how to use the Business Model Canvas and other innovation & change tools, is that the Business Model Canvas and Lean Canvas have helped to accelerate a transformation in not only how people are taught, but also how they are permitted to conduct business.

Creating a Business Model Canvas as a Team

The Visual and Collaborative Workplace Transformation

This transformation is a game changer because it represents a growing integration of methods into workshops and meetings that enable facilitators to engage not only auditory learners, but visual, kinesthetic and social learners as well.

This more human approach to prototyping a business helps to add a bit more structure around an idea, in a collaborative way that will more quickly surface gaps and flaws while also testing assumptions, collecting idea fragments into a more holistic value proposition and creating a vision for how to make it real.

But, as we all know, any new business or any potential innovation will create an abundance of required and necessary changes. Unfortunately, whether you are using the Business Model Canvas or the Lean Canvas, the truth and the limitation is that they are but a single tool and can’t help you walk the rest of the path to reality. To create the changes necessary to realize your vision, you will need many more tools.

“When what people do aligns with what they think and feel, then and only then, will you achieve the outcomes you’re looking for.”

The good news is that this more visual and collaborative way of working helps with two of the most important keys to success – buy-in and alignment – and also helps to align mind, body, and spirit to harness the whole brain and its three constructs:

  1. Cognitive (thinking)
  2. Conative (doing)
  3. Affective (feeling)

Outcome-Driven Change Framework by Braden Kelley

Beyond the Business Model Canvas and the Lean Canvas

Visual, collaborative tools like the Business Model Canvas, Lean Canvas, Empathy Map, Value Proposition Canvas, Experience Maps, Service Design, and even Customer Journey Maps have laid the groundwork for a more modern, more powerful way of working that leverages the whole brain of the individual, and all three learning styles of the collective.

And where these tools all represent the beginning of a visual, collaborative endeavor to create change, they are missing the tools to help plan for and execute the changes that are being proposed.

Making the Shift to Human-Centered Change

This is where the Change Planning Toolkit™ powering the Human-Centered Change methodology comes in. It has been designed with the Change Planning Canvas™ at its core to feel familiar to those already using the aforementioned tools and empower teams to take the next steps on their journey to be successful:

  1. Innovation and Intrapreneurship
  2. Startup Creation
  3. Digital Transformation
  4. Design Thinking
  5. New Product Development (NPD)
  6. Service Design
  7. Experience Design
  8. Customer Experience (CX) Improvement Efforts
  9. Projects (make sure you also get the Visual Project Charter™)
  10. Change Initiatives

Charting Change is Number OneSo, if you’re already familiar with the Business Model Canvas, Lean Canvas, Empathy Map, Value Proposition Canvas, Experience Maps, Service Design, or Customer Journey Maps then you should get a copy of my latest book Charting Change and it will show you the thinking behind the Change Planning Toolkit™, how to use it to maintain the momentum of your team and the energy behind your idea, and how to leverage both to push it forward towards reality.

The Change Planning Toolkit™ will help you beat the 70% change failure rate, create more efficient and effective change initiatives (and even projects), and accelerate your pace of successful change in order to keep up with the accelerating pace of change all around us and to be more nimble, agile, and responsive than your competition.

Three Steps to Human-Centered Change Success

There is a simple three step process for people who want to start saving time and get the jump on their competition today by familiarizing themselves with the Human-Centered Change methodology:

  1. 10 free tools available to download now
  2. 26 free tools when you buy the book
  3. 70+ tools when you license the toolkit

I’ve invested more than $1 million into the Change Planning Toolkit™ so you don’t have to, and so you can leverage this investment to gain all of the benefits above while also saving yourself thousands or millions of dollars in consulting fees – every year.

And for a limited time, there are some exciting FREE training opportunities available to a handful of organizations who contact me.


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Top 10 Benefits of the Change Planning Toolkit™

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Top 10 Benefits of the Change Planning Toolkit™

Some of the smartest people and organizations in the world are learning how to use the Change Planning Toolkit™ to change how they plan and execute change and to undertake the transformation work necessary to thrive in the experience economy. Who wouldn’t want to beat the 70% change failure rate?

It’s super easy to get started with the Change Planning Toolkit™.

But, before I tell you WHERE to start, let’s start with WHY…

Top 10 Benefits of the Change Planning Toolkit™

  1. Transparency
  2. Alignment
  3. Engagement
  4. Collaboration
  5. Accountability
  6. Speed
  7. Agility
  8. Adoption
  9. On-Time Delivery
  10. On-Budget Delivery

There are lots of great ways to get started with the Change Planning Toolkit™. Personally I would start by getting a copy of my latest book Charting Change because it was written the toolkit in mind AND because book buyers can get access to 26 of the 50+ tools in the toolkit when they contact me. This includes the powerful Change Planning Canvas™, the keystone designed to sit at the center of all of the other tools and keep everything on track.

Not ready to commit to reading the book?

Then, go ahead and get comfortable for free with some of the frameworks, tools and this more visual, collaborative and kinesthetic way of working by downloading the 10 free change tools, which include a combination of frameworks from the book and powerful tools like:

  1. The Visual Project Charter
  2. The Eleven Change Roles™
  3. A visualization of the ACMP Standard for Change Management®

I’ve invested decades and millions of dollars worth of time into putting this toolkit together for you (this is my 10,000 hour project for those Gladwell fans out there). The crazy part is that your annual investment in the Change Planning Toolkit™ will be less than the cost of hiring a change consultant for even 30 minutes.

You can learn more about the Change Planning Toolkit™ by checking out this short 25-minute introductory webinar.

I hope you’ll consider thinking differently about change, and I encourage you to consider about joining the change revolution at whatever starting point above that feels comfortable for you.

Get started with the Change Planning Toolkit™ here


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What is the Cost of a Failed Change Initiative or Innovation Project?

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What is the Cost of a Failed Change Initiative or Innovation Project?

It seems like a simple question.

One that you would expect to lead to some risk mitigation behavior, but it doesn’t.

And when you consider that companies are spending an increasing amount of their budget on technology and working to transform their operations to be more digital in order to provide a better experience for customers, employees, partners and suppliers while simultaneously creating a more efficient and effective business, you would think that companies would do everything possible to make sure that these projects succeed, but they don’t.

Everyone knows that a lot of technology projects fail to achieve their intended objectives, timings, and budgets. This fact and the increasing investment levels should cause more executives to look for ways to de-risk these technology investments in digitizing the business, but they’re not.

Why is that?

Are we really so afraid of learning new ways of doing things that would dramatically reduce the risk and expense of project failures that we will continue using the old ways even though we know they don’t work?

Even though there are incredibly inexpensive and easy ways of reducing both the risk of project failures and the cost of project execution, patterns of behavior are not changing…

Perhaps you see the world differently.

Perhaps you’re fed up with project failures and want to increase the speed of both change execution and change adoption.

Consider answering these five simple questions before spending a single minute on your next innovation project, change initiative, or digital transformation effort:

  1. How much is an hour of your time worth to the company you work for? (multiply this by the number of hours you expect to invest in this project or initiative)
  2. What is the fully-loaded monetary value of the time that employees are going to spend on this project or initiative?
  3. How much do you pay to a single contract project manager to spin up a project before the first minute of actual work begins? Over the life of the project?
  4. How much are you planning to spend with consulting companies on this project or initiative?
  5. How much are you planning to spend on contractors to staff this project or initiative?

Get access to the Change Planning Toolkit for less than $100Have you got the numbers in your mind?

Now, are any of these numbers $100 or more?

I’m sure they are, unless of course you’re going to do the project yourself in less than an hour and don’t value your time very much.

So, what if I told you that for less than $100 you could plan and execute your change initiatives, innovation projects and transformation investments in a much more visual and collaborative way and simultaneously reduce the chances of project failure and the cost of executing your project?

Well, you can. You just have to be willing to challenge orthodoxies and use a new set of tools, a new approach, that will feel very natural and empowering if you’re already comfortable with the Business Model Canvas, Lean, Design Thinking, or the Lean Startup.

All you need to get started is a copy of my latest book Charting Change and a $99.99/yr license for the Change Planning Toolkit™ (which comes with a QuickStart Guide). In exchange you’ll get tools worth more than $1,200 and will help to support the creation of the Human-Centered Innovation Toolkit™.

It’s as simple as that.

And to get you started if you’re still unsure, go ahead and grab the 10 Free Downloads and the poster-size Visual Project Charter™ and the poster-size Experiment Canvas™ from the under-construction Human-Centered Innovation Toolkit™.

Let’s change change and keep innovating – together!


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