In his book "Leading Change," J.P. Kotter says, “Because major change is so difficult to accomplish, a powerful force is required to sustain the process.”

Last month, Denise Lamonte shared her experiences on what it took to create that "powerful force" through the establishment of a "guiding coalition."

"The characteristics of people who should serve on a coalition are key in choosing the coalition -- specifically to avoid egos that fill the room and those whose behaviors create mistrust and kill teamwork," Denise shared. "These two requirements are straight out of Kotter, and I applied them diligently."

It was a message that resonated with more than one of the event's attendees.

When asked what was the event's most important take-away, ATD-OC member Mary Escudero replied: "The success of the coalition was the direct result of choosing the right people. Denise set up her significant criteria and followed them in staffing the coalition and its support organization. When backfilling positions or expanding her team she kept to the same criteria. This created a true team that worked together creatively."

Donald McGray was surprised to learn that the guiding coalition at St. Joseph's comprised of 10 people on three teams:

And yet, despite the coalition's size and complexity, the three teams experienced a meager 10% turnover over a period of 14 months. 

Erik Eisel, Training and Technology SIG Leader, pointed out that Denise ensured her guiding coalition had a firm foundation. "She basically explained to her colleagues, 'Look, if you want to use Kotter, let's really read him, and figure out how to apply him.' By getting consensus around Kotter, she was able to build a foundation for the entire change process. By adopting Kotter in this way, it prevented this process from becoming ad-hoc."

Even though this presentation addressed such a large project, attendees felt that there were some best practices they could immediately walk away with. A few attendees commented on the practice of opening coalition meetings with "Good News - an opportunity for people to share with the team what successes have come from their work since they last met."

Denise is carrying her passion for change management into ATD-OC's new Special Interest Group: Change Leadership. Co-led by Denise and Lisa Kolbe, the Change Leadership SIG will provide an opportunity for participants to learn more about current and upcoming change models as well as deepen the dialogue about their role in managing and leading change. 

"As learning and development professionals, we live and breath change everyday," says Lisa Kolbe. "By better understanding this from a theoretical level will help us all tailor our learning solutions and OD initiatives for effectiveness."

"Lisa and I were talking at an MLE during one of the structured networking sessions about change initiatives we were both a part of," said Denise. "We mused about how many of us are involved in these types of initiatives -- and we concluded it was probably a lot. We quickly realized we both had a passion for change leadership and were hungry to learn more and talk with others about their experiences to enhance our knowledge."

The Change Leadership SIG will explore a wide variety of theories, models, and aspects of the change process through a unique dialogue-oriented structure. 

"We wanted to take more formally-shared knowledge around various change theories and leverage the opportunity to increase the dialogue and provide opportunities for peer coaching/learning," said Denise and Lisa. "By shortening and focusing the guest speaker’s case study of change we can view real world examples of our featured change theory in practice and increase learning penetration and future application."

The Change Leaderhip SIG meets the first Tuesday of every other month, with the next meeting in May. See our Event Calendar for details.

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