Why I professionalize changemaking
7 reasons for my work, advocacy, and PhD research
Transformation initiatives remain at an abysmal 70% failure rate despite being essential.
Powerful and unfamiliar forces are reshaping our lives, proving most established systems obsolete and creating urgent opportunities for (re)invention. And yet our work feels haphazard, daunting, and fraught.
Having come of age amidst a dirty fight between the old and the new, I have dedicated 20+ years of practice and research to discovering the building blocks and formulas for regenerative transformation because it is the key to the ability of all to thrive in harmony with our planet. Because change-making is – devastatingly – often a matter of life and death. Because we’re unnecessarily burning through the only people willing to enter the arena. And because – thankfully – we can do better.
My experience confirms that we can transform our projects, organizations, industries, and communities, and I hope to partner with you on all the levels – consulting, Boards, keynoting, and research – that advance this mission.
Now, let me break down the 7 reasons behind my work, advocacy, and PhD research.
1. Changemaking has an abysmal failure rate
Transformation initiatives are crucial yet notoriously ineffective, with a staggering 70% failure rate by some measures. My experience points to our inability to plan and execute transformation as the chief reason. Apt in all manners of planning, we – stubbornly – sadly – chance transformation. As the “change manager” for multi-million-dollar projects, how often have I fought for a chance to do better than react to change?
Whenever we’ve changed the world, we’ve done so by planning just enough to throw changemakers in front of the tanks of the status quo. A graphic analogy, it matters to me because the grandmother whose love coats the hazy memories of my childhood was a WWII combat veteran.
2. We’re short on implementation, not solutions
We could drown in exceptional ideas. Having been a shark/investor for countless pitches, it is not lightly that I say, we’re not even short on proofs of concept (POC). Where we collectively lag is implementation because transformational solutions require, well, transformation… and we are really bad at it. However, I am grateful to report that this unfortunate reality is not fixed. Through Vivit and my advocacy, we have reversed the odds countless times, leaving a legacy of effective transformation across 5 continents.
3. Changemaking-wise, we’re getting beat. Might as well get in the game!
We were discussing tipping points and that we don’t need to change minds in order to create change when a sustainability-focused publisher told me, “The extreme right and climate change deniers have picked up the same tactics and — not inhibited by ethics — winning with them!”
Even if what they pursue sickens me, people like Stalin are exceptionally effective change-makers. The power to change the world belongs to those who unlock it, even accidentally. It behooves us to master the building blocks and formulas for transformation – my current PhD research – to diffuse bad actors and remake the world for the better.
4. Changemakers are the world’s most precious resource
Let’s be honest, most people don’t care.
Blessed with a formidable global network of people prioritizing the greater good, I have committed to a distinct type of individual: a changemaker.
Changemakers feel responsible for the world’s problems we didn’t cause, see possibilities others miss, feel compelled to intervene, and carry guilt for the problems that go unsolved on our watch. Jumping into the arena time and again, often un- or underprepared, changemakers are the world’s most precious resource and deserve all the validation, support, and tools we can muster. To start, I packed the best available insight and tools into a roadmap to impact any changemaker can follow (Change-maker’s Handbook, 2023).
5. The human cost of our failure to professionalize changemaking is unbearable
Our work – remaking the world for the better – sure is cut out for us. But our recruitment strategy – if we had one! – would be pitiful.
Our blood, sweat, and tears don’t always result in an impact we could settle for, let alone celebrate. We pave the road to a proverbial destination only to witness a plethora of off-ramps and turnarounds pop up. Our wins are harder, fewer, and less rewarding than what we promise ourselves to keep going.
Against popular wisdom, passion does not shield us from toxic stress, and our problems can’t be reduced to “boundaries” because we’re (thankfully!) vested in outcomes beyond our control.
I know a changemaker diagnosed with PTSD from their work in sustainability, a changemaker who hasn’t been able to digest food for years, and countless relentless visionaries who fight every day – as I do – to live on the lighter side of depression.
Pitting changemakers against the status quo, transformation invites a lifetime of conflict that takes a toll on our psyche, bodies, and lives. Is it any wonder we are burning out?
Sitting it out is not an option for us. We’re wired to intervene. But we can get better at it! And we must STOP sacrificing changemakers at the altar of good intentions.
6. A wiring, a calling, and a choice, changemaking is also a profession that must be resourced as such
For centuries, our impact has been haphazard. An incidental byproduct rather than a planned outcome of our effort.
Outside the pockets of political campaigns and advertising, the craft of changemaking has been mistakenly relegated to magic.
If you were a geneticist, your training would include everything we have learned about the human genome to date. As a chemist, you would start with Mendeleev’s periodic table of elements. Unlike doctors, chemists, plumbers, or florists, change-makers start with… nada. No unifying theory. No level-setting. No climbing onto the shoulders of giants. Every changemaker I ever met feels alone. That must end now!
Until we articulate the building blocks of transformation and understand how they come together to create the impact we target, making a difference will continue to feel like the unlikely upside of nearly assured self-destruction. We – the changemakers – deserve better.
7. The opportunity is irresistible
The calendar had barely marked the turn of the century when I discovered that I could do “sustainability.” Having come of age amidst the imploding Soviet Union, I had already committed to doing change better. The sustainability movement offered me a career at the intersection of my purpose, skills, and what the world needed.
I went on to take 18-odd years to figure out that I was a changemaker. While I floundered, there was no guarantee that I would have stuck it out – let alone excelled – and that makes me grateful that I did and sad that it came down to a gamble. How many have we lost because we failed to tell them they were on track?
How many Olympic sprinters would we have if our recruitment strategy was merely hoping that exceptional runners find their own way to the blocks on race day?
Imagine the next generation of regenerative change-makers and the impact they would create if we dared to own our trade and recruit for it?
If you can see the value of being a verified (e.g., on LinkedIn) changemaker – as somebody with the aptitude and the track record of envisioning and realizing better realities – as somebody who should get paid for reinventing stubborn systems while taking people on the journey – you understand why I professionalize change-making.