1. From Tactical Add-On to Strategic Imperative: The Positioning Crisis
Change managers continue to struggle with professional positioning, often seen as “divorce lawyers at a wedding” rather than essential strategic partners. The hesitancy to claim strategic space persists despite growing organisational need. Change capability coaching must address this identity crisis, helping practitioners shift from reactive support roles to proactive business enablers. The question remains: how do we move from being tolerated to being indispensable, transforming change management from optional project overhead to core organisational capability that underpins all strategic initiatives?
2. Speaking Business Language: The Communication Translation Challenge
Practitioners repeatedly identify the need for language that resonates with corporate culture and leadership. Using NLP principles and business terminology—focussing on value, outcomes, adoption, and benefits rather than change methodology—emerges as critical. The conversation reveals frustration that “what we’ve been saying hasn’t resonated sufficiently.” Effective change capability requires translating change concepts into compelling business cases that connect emotionally and strategically with stakeholders, moving beyond change jargon to speak the language of profit, people, and planet.
3. Value-Driven Change: Demonstrating Tangible Business Impact
Making the business case through clear value outcomes remains paramount. Practitioners discuss B Corp principles (people, planet, profit) as frameworks for demonstrating holistic impact. The emphasis is on “getting back to the benefit, the value, the adoption and what you’re trying to accomplish” rather than focussing on methodology or technology choices. Change capability development must include measuring and articulating business outcomes, shifting conversations from activity-based to value-based assessments that resonate with financial and strategic priorities.
4. The Budget Battle: Justifying Change Investment Under Cost Constraints
Economic pressures create a recurring challenge: clients and organisations viewing change management as discretionary spending. The outsourcing world particularly struggles with suppliers saying “we would have done more change management, but the client doesn’t want to pay for it.” Concerns about cybersecurity and other priorities potentially reducing change budgets further intensify this challenge. Change management coaching must equip practitioners with compelling investment cases, demonstrating that change capability prevents costly failures rather than adding expense, positioning it as risk management rather than optional overhead.
5. Human Impact: Personal Wellbeing and Anxiety Management
Recognition that change affects “everybody” brings wellbeing and anxiety management into focus. This reflects growing awareness that change capability isn’t just organisational—it’s deeply personal. Making change “less painful,” helping people “welcome it as opposed to oppose it,” and supporting those experiencing change-induced anxiety represents an evolving dimension of change management. Coaching for change management must address psychological safety, resilience, and emotional intelligence, acknowledging that sustainable change requires caring for the humans experiencing it, not just managing the process.
1. Building the Volunteer Army: Democratising Change Capability
The most frequently discussed theme centres on developing change capability across multiple roles—not just dedicated change managers. Organisations need “multi-trade” professionals who blend change management with project management, business relationship management, and enterprise architecture. This demands a fundamental shift: teaching people how to learn and adapt continuously, building change-ready capacity from the ground up. The challenge is creating hybrid roles and cross-functional capability without diluting expertise, whilst making change management coaching accessible to line managers, team leaders, and individual contributors who manage change daily without the title.
2. Portfolio Paralysis: Managing Change Volume and Impact
The metaphor of expanding IT demand pipelines whilst adoption remains “a garden hose that’s going to explode” captures the portfolio management crisis. Organisations need visibility into the cumulative impact of multiple changes, understanding change as a portfolio rather than discrete projects. The 80/20 principle emerges: focussing energy on the 20% of activities that create 80% of impact. Change capability coaching must address portfolio-level thinking, helping organisations prioritise ruthlessly and recognise that more change initiatives don’t equal more progress without corresponding adoption capacity.
3. From Episodic Projects to Continuous Transformation
The shift from change as “episodic project drop-in activity” to “pervasive continuous activity” represents a fundamental reconceptualisation. Organisations must become “transforming organisations” in perpetual evolution rather than executing discrete changes. This requires change to become “an enabling capability that underpins all activities” rather than something you “get around to if we have time.” Change capability coaching must prepare practitioners and organisations for this paradigm shift, developing muscles for continuous adaptation rather than project-based intervention.
4. Creating Conditions for Experimentation and Learning
Practitioners recognise that “we don’t know what 2030 looks like” and must create space for experimentation—which “isn’t an easy thing to execute” in large organisations. Building capability to learn, experiment, and adapt emerges as more valuable than prescriptive methodologies. This connects to teaching people “how to learn” from the beginning, developing intrinsic change capacity. Change management coaching must foster experimental mindsets, helping organisations become comfortable with uncertainty and view change as opportunity for discovery rather than threat to stability.
5. Ecosystem Integration: Building Partnerships Across Functions
The recognition that change capability requires ecosystem thinking—connecting C-suite strategy with ground-level implementation, integrating with PPM, working across organisational boundaries—represents mature systems thinking. Examples of successful co-development partnerships demonstrate the power of collaborative approaches. This includes understanding that “the richness really comes in when we get onto the ground” and recognising different worldviews across organisational levels. Change capability development must span the entire ecosystem, creating shared language and mutual accountability across functions, levels, and partnerships.
