I am a recovering change management consultant. Over the last 20 years or so, I’ve focused my career primarily in the people change management space. My job was to help companies realize the ROI of their multi-million dollar investments – whether they be investments in organizational redesign, new systems or large scale business transformations – by mitigating resistance, creating buy-in and driving adoption. The way to do that was to get the people on-board with what was happening. If they stopped resisting what was inevitable and just adopted the change, then all would be right in the “corporate” world. And I use the term “corporate” as a catch-all. These challenges and my project work spanned industries and organizations, from non-profit and government to privately owned and publicly traded enterprises.

The challenge is and always will be people. People will make or break the success of any change a company wants to make. So my job was part data analysis, part coaching, part writing, part training and part shrink. Get into the heads of the people to figure out what they wanted and find a way to make this change something they want. Or better yet – need. Call it marketing. Call it change management. Call it what you want. No matter how you slice and dice it, or whatever you call it, I was doing it wrong. And so are you.