Change Managers and their project colleagues often spend time worrying about what might go wrong. They put controls in place to ensure that nothing goes off the rails, minimising risk and keeping a steady hand, just in case “something goes wrong”. But what happens if, instead, something goes right? Sure, we need to keep an eye on risk but if … Read More

Think about your business. How well is going at the moment? The model I am going to introduce here is based on one used by Melbourne radio legend, Ross Stevenson, and is used with his specific permission. Give your business a score out of 100 with a number that is not divisible by 5. If your score is over 80, … Read More

Most large corporate organisations have a Chief Risk Officer (CRO) – either someone with that title or someone who takes on responsibility for risk across the business. But we have a theory that we should rename this person the Chief “No-Risk” Officer … In my experience, projects are worked and re-worked until most, if not all, of the risk is … Read More

You take your car in for a new set of tyres, you choose the brand and model of tyres you want to have fitted and head home, expecting that you’ll get a call to pick the car up later that afternoon. 2 o’clock. No call. 4:30pm. Still no call. You are becoming mildly agitated by this stage because you are … Read More

So what? Now what? There are probably no more important questions to ask when a change or transformation is announced. Let’s start with so what? When an announcement of a significant change is made, maybe a transformation, it is usually light on for context and detail. We are having an organisational restructure. We are going to deploy a new technology … Read More

I am fascinated by the concept of one size fits all. I bought a baseball-style cap which claimed to be one size fits all. Clearly, they had never spoken to me because, even adjusted to its largest size, it wasn’t going anywhere near fitting my head. Maybe that size does fit some – it certainly doesn’t fit all. It’s the … Read More

Change Managers love a good WIIFM – an acronym for What’s In It For Me? In many cases, however, the me part turns into looking at what is in for the company, for the project or the Change Manager themselves. What will make it easiest for me to deliver the change? We are all about WIIFT – What’s In For THEM. Change and … Read More

As Change Managers (or, as we prefer, Change Leaders), we are the ones who are supposed to be best equipped to lead change. Yet, as a discipline or practice, how much have we changed during the past 20 or 30 years? Back when we started doing change projects for clients – before it was even called Change Management – we … Read More

I drive a medium sized SUV which according to the specifications has a front windscreen and three rear vision mirrors. The total area of the front windscreen is around 25 times bigger than the total combined area of the three rear vision mirrors. This doesn’t take into account the size of the side windows that also allow me to see … Read More

Have you ever found yourself in a meeting where someone is presenting the proposed scope and direction for a change, or dare we say it, a transformation project? How often do you hear about what the project SHOULD do? What we SHOULD be including our business case. What the outcomes of the project SHOULD be. How we SHOULD approach the … Read More

We’ve all been there – a program of work is being completed and there are email messages being sent as part of the “comms plan” to ensure that everyone knows how they will be impacted. As someone wise, once said “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink”. In our context, this might be better … Read More

My late mother used to enjoy cooking her famous boiled fruit cakes almost as much I enjoyed devouring them, typically within a couple of days of their arrival. One thing you could rely on was when you bit into the first slice of that cake, it tasted exactly like it did last time. Towards the end of her life, she … Read More

What is it like in your workplace? Are people valued and made to feel important despite the position they occupy in the organisational diagram? Is there an implied importance attached to the person who sits in the box at the top of the organisational diagram? Do the folk whose names appear at the bottom of the organisational chart feel like … Read More

We often find ourselves working with clients who want to “transform their business”. As we have said before, though, it’s one thing to change the business, let alone transform the business. To truly transform the business, can you fix it or do you have to start again? Can you renovate or must you re-build? Sure, you can change the way … Read More

We’ve all been there – 45 minutes into a ten-hour road trip and the chorus starts from the back seat – “are we there yet?” If you are using some kind of GPS, you should be able to announce that you have around nine and a quarter hours to go. If not, you can probably take a guess based on … Read More

We have hinted that we had something special on the horizon. We have even used the word in previous posts but we thought it was time to formally introduce you to Transformagination® We talk of change and transformation. But Transformagination is something else. This is how we will change change. It’s a mindset. In fact, it’s a whole new way … Read More

Many people use the words “change” and “transformation” interchangeably – as though they mean exactly the same thing. But they don’t mean the same thing. Whilst certainly related, there is so much more to transformation than there is to change, even big change. Let’s compare dictionary definitions to start with and, for no particular reason, I am using Australia’s Macquarie … Read More

What box are you talking about? Facilitators and workshop presenters love to encourage people to think outside the box. I think it is their attempt to create fresh ideas but, from where we sit, if there is even the shadow of a box in the back of people’s minds, then the cognitive constraints will be there too. We reject the … Read More

Remember when innovation was … well, innovative? In the same way as transformation seems to get used to describe big change, innovation seems to have been hijacked by people who have a good idea. Here’s what innovation isn’t: Doing what your competitor does – that’s copying Doing something that works in another part of your company – that’s leveraging Changing the … Read More

As a Change Manager – or as we prefer – Change Leader, you are clearly responsible for the delivery of a successful set of outcomes for your program of work. But have you stopped and considered the addition of those three letters to make you a Challenge Leader as well? It is easy to get caught up in the protocols … Read More

Imagine. Give yourself the time and space – and the permission – to imagine. Use what if to your benefit. Often, we use what if as a negative – what if this doesn’t happen, what if it goes wrong, what if it breaks, etc. But using it as a positive, changes your mindset dramatically – what if it DOES happen, what if it DOESN’T go wrong, what if it flourishes, etc? Einstein declared that “imagination … Read More

When did transformation become “big change”? I’m not sure whether it was change managers trying to make their resumé look good or whether there was something else at play. Regardless, let us be very clear … transformation is SO much more than big change. Consider these definitions: Change – to make something different Transformation – to change something completely – changing … Read More

We are very much across the concept of change. In fact, as we move through the year, you will see that we are all about change and transformation. We even have a brand new concept to introduce … but more about that later in the year. Right now, though, we need to make a clear distinction between change management and … Read More

I am indebted to my new-found friend, Brad Clark from Cincinnati (Ohio, USA), for drawing my attention to something that was sitting right in front of my nose. We don’t need comms full of corporate jargon and spin. We need story tellers. Yes, story tellers. In some of the posts that I publish in 2026, I will detail the difference between … Read More

That’s us done and dusted for 2025. What a year it has been … But nowhere near as big as 2026 will be. We hope that you have a safe and happy festive season with those you love the most. We’ll be back on deck (the halls) on Monday 5 January 2026, coinciding with the first of our 2026 posts, … Read More

We know that you have had a big 2025 but, here at Untypical, we are getting ourselves ready for an even bigger 2026 as we launch into our Change Change program. We’ve been posting here and there during the latter part of 2025 but in 2026, we are ready to make a difference. We have a few plans for the … Read More

Change and transformation are difficult at the best of times but what happens when it all goes wrong? We have seen it before. We have experienced it ourselves. The best intentions at the start. Everyone saying that they believe in the shared vision. Senior leaders lining up to endorse the program of work and to sign off on the proposed … Read More

We might be straying a little from the Change Change theme but, there again, maybe not. It’s a fair question – what does awesome look like? Are we too eager to declare something as awesome when, in fact, it’s just good. Are we so used to dealing with the mediocre, that, when a colleague or a team deliver something well, … Read More

Isaac Newton is arguably one of the most influential people in history and certainly one of the greatest mathematician and physicists of all time. Born in 1643, I suspect that he never expected to find his theories referred to in a business context almost 400 years later, but here we are. He developed three laws of motion which most people … Read More

If you don’t think that transformation is hard, one of two things is almost certainly true. You are not doing it properly You are not doing transformation, you are doing a big change For too long, people have been talking about transformation as just another word for “big change”. But, remember our defintions: Change – making something different Transformation – … Read More

Change can be pretty simple, you know. In some cases, change happens without any intervention and without any great impact on those affected. On the other hand, change can be complex – but does it have to be? We think that change leadership (deliberate choice of word – we don’t like Change Management as a concept) only really involves four … Read More

Welcome, indeed! A couple of colleagues were sitting in a bar … it sounds like the start of a joke, doesn’t it. They got chatting about the project they were working on and how pedestrian the change activities had become. Their client was a traditional kind of business – risk averse, run by senior leaders who were late in their … Read More