044: How to get leadership to buy-in on change!

The rate of change is like nothing we’ve seen before and thanks to cloud technology, mobile devices and the desire for companies to embrace digital transformation that rate isn’t slowing down anytime soon.   I love change, I even get introduced on stage as a Change Evangelist but getting leadership or my manager or my co workers to embrace the change I want to lead hasn’t always been fun or successful.   When you start breaking down how much change is happening around us in business and our personal lives it's no wonder that most people when presented with a pitch or idea of change immediately default to NO.  While at the same time most have realized that you can’t fight change or stop change, therefore if you don’t embrace it or just say no the only thing you’re doing is pushing off the change today waiting for it to be presented or forced upon you tomorrow.   I decided to breakdown the change agent roles I’ve had in my career both at the Department of Defense as a contractor in cyber security for BAE Systems as well as the technology evangelist at IO data centers.  There are some themes and trends that ring true across both of those jobs and interestingly enough when I looked at the successful change examples they all fell into 3 paths to driving change. 3 Paths to Change: Win your manager & the conversation before it ever happens Focus on baby steps of change Do first yourself then present the change as what you did not just want to do! I breakdown those 3 paths, why I believe you must always try to make your manager look good and why I love quoting Bill Murray from the movie What About Bob in this episode of FOMOFanz.