Since I doubt you’re eager to return to Ms. Ryan’s article, I wanted to share the comment I posted to her article after reading it. Kudos for speaking up and out and keep your post above circulating over the next few months so a balance of voices is heard over just one angry one!

My response:
“Liz, I think I understand your intent in this article – a real change agent isn’t simply a henchman, trust is paramount to being able to cultivate change in an organization, and CEOs have a crucial role to play in this process. That’s my paraphrasing of your comments.

Having said that, this is an irresponsible article at worst and an angry rant at best. I almost got a “dear diary” sense from reading this, as if you’d encountered one too many organizations in transition that had ‘heavies’ at the top who were put in place to do the dirty work of a difficult change. That’s the best case scenario. At worst, what you’re saying is that all by his or her lonesome, a CEO who has cultivated great trust in their teams and has a great strategic idea that will call for a great deal of change throughout the organization can be successful in moving that change vision to reality. That’s plainly an irrational statement that overstates the role of a CEO and oversimplifies the process of getting a group of people to move in a new direction…TOGETHER.

“There is no problem getting people to change if they support the changes. The only changes people resist are the ones they feel are stupid.” The idea that people only resist changes they deem stupid is simplistic. You have to have known that as you wrote this – you just seem too smart to actually believe that to be the case. Every day, there are millions of examples of individuals resisting changes they know are smart and good but yet can’t get themselves to adopt – quitting smoking, eating healthier, paying more attention to their partners, spending more time with their kids, not losing their temper so much, etc. That’s challenging at the individual level. Desire and motivation together are often times – maybe even usually – not powerful enough to make those types of changes smooth. Now add the dynamic of a bunch of individuals working together in an organization and the problem of cultivating organizational change is exponentially more challenging. That’s the role of positive change agents in the change process – to help find the spots of likely or burgeoning change and help leaders nurture those further. Does it always work that way? Heck no – and it’s a perennial frustration of organizational change practitioners like me, but one that doesn’t result in us calling the concept stupid. It results in the good practitioners constantly looking for creative ways to
get better at that aspect of helping leaders and organizations navigating change.

Part of the huge problem I see with your opinion piece is that you only and associate the term Change Agent with the worst possible manifestation of that term – the henchman. And believe me, I empathize with what you describe. It took me several months to realize that I’d been hired to do what my boss didn’t want to do – because it was too challenging, would likely make me unpopular, and involved super, super difficult personalities. And in various transformation programs over the years, I’ve often had to step in where leaders are clearly unprepared for having those difficult conversations with employees about potential layoffs or cost-saving measures. But more often than not, I’ve been a facilitator of positive progress in large organizations where it would be quite literally impossible for one person at the top, no matter how powerful (by position) or influential (through trust) a CEO s/he might be, to make the change happen all by themselves.

I hope readers take your post with a huge grain of salt and cull the most useful points out of it. But I fear many will simply take your post at face value and use your angry opinion as justification for why they can end up doing what you say (and I agree) is the wrong way to go about change – shoving it down people’s throats with fear-inducing threats, rather than engaging people in the change process to create a new reality and cultivating positive Change Agents all around the organization to help stoke the fire of great and successful change.”

Evidently the Mcdonalization of OCM (So many CM Training Institutions/CM Fraternities offering on line OCM certificates) has not worked at all and has just commoditized the OCM field.
These links confirms that:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27190518/ns/business-press_releases/t/ibm-global-study-majority-organizational-change-projects-fail/

http://www.startribune.com/h-b-fuller-wins-case-against-accenture/347256802/

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/projectfailures/erp-change-management-the-silent-killer/12280
http://www.cio.com/article/486284/10_Famous_ERP_Disasters_Dustups_and_Disappointments

It just confirm that in the OCM field you have many “Consultants” that just pretend to deliver but never do (“Pretenders”) and a few Performers that really deliver value (“Contenders”)

Fortunately what happened to Accenture (above) is a warning for any other Pretenders that don’t deliver/address customer requirements and are just clouds and winds without rain..

I will ask Liz how she reached those conclusions about Change Agents.

It is good to express disagreement as long as is backed up with some evidence. Any successful experience deploying Change supporting what is fitly said here? I am interested .

So glad you’re bringing this our attention. I don’t know Liz Ryan but several people in the LinkedIn community identified her as a ghostwriter for a mole. Her writing campaign created the GenXYZ tension that led to a lot of nonsense at the workplace. Her writing is getting worst and more irresponsible.

Besides, the one situation that is the basis for her article seems like a project that didn’t hire a real ‘Change Agent’ with a real change process. The entire process and this person was a stopgap to prevent a mutiny. Not a good way to go about change, very little trust, lots of collateral damage.

Don’t fret…this is just Liz Ryan at it again…Someone should ask her who she wrote this for….

“Why write such rubbish?

Everyone knows agents facilitate because they can bring to the table expertise that is not available in-house, otherwise why would corporations hire them?

Would you expect the CEO of a domestic corporation about to start up a business overseas to “..manage the leadership team to make it happen” without outside advice and assistance?.”