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Heather Stagl / September 17, 2009

The birth of a part-time change agent

In my own story of organizational change as well as the stories of others, being a change agent started out as a part-time thing.  Sometimes you realize that in order to effectively perform your day job, organizational changes need to happen so you take them on.  Sometimes the opportunities you see are outside the scope of your job, so you try to get involved.  Either way, you can’t just give up your “day job” to start working full time as a change agent.

I’ve recently talked to a salesperson and an IT system administrator who both see opportunities and have hopes of implementing organizational change within their companies, but at the moment, it’s not in their job description.

What are they doing to get started as a change agent?

The salesperson has contacted the corporate Organization Development function to let them know she is interested in that type of work, so when something needs to be done in her division, they might be able to involve her.  She has identified that silos exist in her division, and she’s dedicated to figuring out how to influence improvements within the scope of her own job.

The IT system administrator would like to develop a centralized system that would change the way the company uses information.  The project is out of the scope of his current job.  He wrote up a proposal for the system that has been passed around at higher levels, and he made a presentation at a company conference.  Now he’s starting to set up meetings with influential leaders in the company to try to build buy-in for his idea.

How did you get started as a change agent (or what are you doing to start)?  I would love to hear your stories.

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Filed Under: Change Agents Tagged With: change agent, roles

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Comments

  1. Pascal Vanden Bossche says

    September 17, 2009 at 3:48 pm EST

    Hi there, this is a great idea, the call to action, I myself am being a change agent all over the place, as I am a freelance trainer in project management (actually more of the leadership than the management part)

    Wouldn’t it be a great idea if we could get people to share this on Facebook?

  2. Holger Nauheimer says

    September 18, 2009 at 1:58 am EST

    I started as a consultant and specialists for nomadic ways of life; did studies in Somalia on pastoral production systems. At that time, I understood that we live in an unstable environment – in constant insecurity.

    My life took a couple turns until somebody asked me to facilitate a workshop. My first facilitation, 1994 in Kazakhstan! I have proceeded a path through change ever since. There were probably two encounters that influenced me most: Systemic NLP as tought by Robert Dilts and Open Space Technology by Harrison Owen.

  3. Guido says

    September 18, 2009 at 2:56 am EST

    Hello there, great idea to write your birth day story as a change agent.

    I studied Industrial Engineering @ the Eindhoven University of Technology and did my final project and thesis at Philp Morris in the Netherlands. though my taskl was to teach and implement a maintenance model, there i was asked to help the Maintenance Department to “become friends again” with the Production Department. I introduced a top down and bottom up appraoch to get them on speaking terms which indluded of course change management for both departments.

    I loved this kind of work and still do!! I teach bachelors now the fun and importance of change management! Can we share our expericences somwhere on facebook or on linkedin? what’s you idea?

  4. Maria Gajewski says

    September 18, 2009 at 7:33 am EST

    My first job in the nonprofit world was at a small agency that underwent two mergers in two years, as well as ending an affiliation with a national group. This was a crash course in change management!

    I got started as a change agent by being as involved in the restructuring as I could get away with. I had conversations with our strategic planning consultants, I attended board meetings whenever I could, and I shared my ideas as much as possible.

    Ever since then I’ve been fascinated by the changes that organizations go through and whether they are top-down, bottom-up, or something in between.

  5. Tim Gardner says

    September 18, 2009 at 8:54 pm EST

    I got a position as a trainer for technical skills in a new operation, which sort of grew to training team skills, conflict resolution, and developing pay and progression paths. From that job I got my first formal change agent position, working in a union facility to move from a traditional hierarchy structure to a team work-share approach.
    So I sort of drifted into it.

  6. Bob Gold says

    September 19, 2009 at 12:16 pm EST

    In 1979, I was a very young computer operator at an insurance company in Evanston, IL. I made a suggestion to my boss about a small change in the way the system worked that would help my fellow operators and me be more efficient. My boss had me write a memo directly to the systems programming group with my idea. They weren’t able to implement the idea, but a couple of months later, I was recruited into their group, with a nice raise. That’s when IT went from being a job to being a career for me.

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