Announcing The Indigo Podcast: An Exploration of Human Flourishing at Work and Beyond

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Announcing The Indigo Podcast: An Exploration of Human Flourishing at Work and Beyond

When Chris Everett and I formed Indigo Anchor in 2018, we knew we would be a different kind of management consulting firm.  We would not be interested in fancy suits, not interested in churning out reports that were unhinged from real change. Nor would we be interested in peddling the latest organizational pop psychology.  

What we wanted to do was bring evidence-based approaches and strategies from academia, the military, and successful enterprise organizations to clients that were truly ready for the change required for improvement.

Fast forward to 2019, we’ve stayed true to these values and have had tremendous success where our competitors have previously failed.  And we’ve received validation that we are indeed “different.” We are “bold” … “challenging” … “funny” … “intense.” We’ve had clients laugh, cry,

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What Everyone in HR Needs to Know About Change

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What Everyone in HR Needs to Know About Change

Models for planning and executing organizational change abound—for example, Kotter’s eight steps, among many others. These models are helpful in highlighting many of the critical aspects of organizational change, and I highly recommend immersing yourself in them. 

That being said, I find that such models often deal more with planned organizational change than with unplanned or continuous organizational change. 

And in an increasingly turbulent world, it’s important for human resources (HR) professionals and the HR function overall to

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Want to Communicate Change? Do THIS.

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Want to Communicate Change? Do THIS.

“Undercommunicating the vision by a factor of ten” is one of the reasons why organizational transformation efforts fail according to John Kotter, a prolific writer on various facets of leadership and organizational change and professor emeritus at the Harvard Business School (Kotter, 1995: 63). 

And as we all know—and as Kotter acknowledged—“Communication comes in both words and deeds, and the latter are often the most powerful form” (Kotter, 1995: 64).

Namely, actions speak louder than words. 

So if you want to communicate change in your organization,

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What HR People Need to Know About Change

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What HR People Need to Know About Change

In a recent post and in some of my research, I’ve been exploring the role that human resources (HR) plays in organizational change. This includes both HR as a function and HR professionals themselves as they get involved (either proactively or reactively) in change efforts.

And there’s one key aspect of organizational change that I think is helpful for HR people to consider. 

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What’s HR’s Role in Change Management?

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What’s HR’s Role in Change Management?

Is human resources (HR) the organizational function that must lead when dealing with organizational change?

Or is managing change a fundamental leadership competency that a wide array of people from every function should have or develop? If that’s the case, should HR professionals themselves try to be change agents?

What works best in organizations that are dealing with a particularly turbulent business environment?

These are a few of the questions that I had the pleasure of discussing last week in a lively conversation in Cincinnati with

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