Where we draw inspiration from…

The short answer is many, many places.

For us, the hallmark of Brave Change is curiosity—looking beyond what we know we know and what we’re comfortable with… and we are nothing if not curious (and quite nerdy).

This might be better off as a video of us talking?

When we started practicing change many moons ago, it was a cut and dry answer. Prosci. In our neck of the wood for a long time Prosci was all there was (particularly in the Queensland Government) and in many regards still is.

Several years into our careers, the first edition of Change Management Body of Knowledge (CMBOK) was published in 2014 with The Effective Change Manager’s Handbook that formed the basis of APMG’s Change Practitioner Certification. This became a new industry standard and was endorsed by the Change Management Institute and acknowledge by Australian Institute of Project Management and Project Management Institute (who then went on to write their own Change Management Standard in xxxx within input from some of the authors of CMBOK).

We both have backgrounds in Marketing and Communication and draw heavily from principals around consumer behaviours and … . We also draw inspiration from IAP2’s Public Participation Spectrum to shape engagement strategy and planning. The ongoing development and cocreation happening globally through IAP2 is well worth a look at; we think it applies and should heavily inspire the work we do as change management practitioners.

In additional her various change management certifications and accreditation, Lesleigh is also formally trained and accredited in Project Management and draws heavily from her experience and training in PRINCE2™, PMBOK and working with MSP™, P3O™ and MoP™.

…and so many different models… and they aren’t all necessarily developed for change management but have either been adopted or we’ve adopted on the way. SCARF, Fisher Transition Curve, Bridges Model, Kublar-Ross Model, various models and techniques from Neuro-linguistic programming, nudge theory, gamified learning techniques, appreciative inquiry and a whole host of techniques and tools from positive psychology. The list does go on and on a bit and we talk about some of our favourites and why we use them throughout this handbook. The is no right answer. And with some many backgrounds forming what is becoming contemporary change practice, it is important to be curious, to explore and experiment.

In more recent years, we’ve been pulled into Agile, its mindsets and ways of working, and naturally moved towards the evolving thinking Business and Organisational Agility. For us this is a much more natural way of working and features heavily through the Change Cube Blueprint.

In the early days of our Agile adventures we devoured the work of Jason Little and have watched with great delight as the Lean Change community has blossomed. We’ve also notice that it’s been Aussies that have been bringing the Agile Change conversation even more in the mainstream with the launch of the Agile Change Leadership Institute founded by Lena Ross (author of Change Hacks and Change Essentials) and Dr Jennifer Frahm (author Conversations of Change). In 2020 Lena and Jen released the Agile Change Playbook with has already built a cult following as the next iteration of thinking about delivering change in a more agile and sustainable way.

We’re extremely privileged to have a front row seat to our profession’s evolution with the roles we play at Change Community Hub as founding members and being part of the Round Table Team. It’s incredible to see how rapidly our profession has grown – what we were doing in change when we first started and no one knew what it was (including us, let’s be fair) to having industry standards, multiple methodologies and thriving though leadership is a delight.

While Change Management at is core has always been around adaptability and agility, the emergence of more formal project delivery approaches has wreaked havoc on more traditional Change Management methodologies that are just not designed to work easily with Agile delivery. The same rings true when you try to scale these methodologies into program- and portfolio-level delivery and ways of working. The concept of enterprise project vs enterprise portfolio are completely different concepts. They just don’t easily scale or fit simply because program and portfolio require a slightly different way of thinking.

This is why and how the Peak Change Blueprint came to be. After years of jimmy-rigging traditional methodologies to fit into places they aren’t meant to or want to go, we stepped back and started to rethink the process, sequencing and what actually needs to happen when to create value. We’re all time poor, we don’t always have the right skilled resources and how can we work on high value activities rather than ticking through the boxes of change management “best practice”.