Jason Little

Agile Change Management: An Adaptable Approach to Managing Change

Prosci adapted ADKAR to work inside agile. Lean Change Management was built from agile principles. Here's why that distinction matters for change practitioners.

Lean Change Management vs Prosci ADKAR – Modern Change Management Explained.

Prosci’s “Lean Change + ADKAR” article ranks well but conflates process Lean with Lean Change. This post sets the record straight: Lean Change is a feedback-driven, co-created way to evolve systems through small, testable experiments—not a linear adoption model. We show where their mapping misleads, when ADKAR can be a useful diagnostic (not the backbone), and how to run real experiments that beat change theatre.

How Lean Change Can Help You "De-Layer" Your Organization

Flattening your org chart? A 20-year study of 5,500 finance firms shows that shedding a management layer leaves you with a workforce that’s more conscientious, agreeable, and open—because autonomy-averse staff exit. Pilot-led, C-suite-backed shifts keep top talent; big-bang rollouts leak it. Remember: structure shapes retention.

5 Tips to Help Break Organizational Silos

Managing organizational change can feel impossible when silos and a rigid waterfall mindset dominate the culture. In this post, we tackle these challenges head-on, offering 5 proven strategies to help you foster collaboration, adaptability, and meaningful transformation at the operational level.

3 Tips for Managing Organizational Complexity

Agile isn't Declining, It's Thriving!

There is so much noise that agile is dead. Our panel featuring Jason Little, Chris Shinkle, John Tanner and Quinton Quartel disagree.

The Six Big Ideas of Adaptive Organizations

The Six Big Ideas of Adaptable Organizations help you help your organization make sense of where they're at and what they want to do.

The Pulse of Change Management: Insights from the Frontline

5 Benefits for Visualizing Work

Change Canvas work because they make the invisible, visible. Visualizing your change through a change canvas or big visible wall is the best way to maintain a single-source-of-truth that helps everyone know what's going on with the change.

From Human to Machine: How AI is Revolutionizing Change Management Strategies

The biggest change management trend in 2023 will be the adoption of AI. Here's how ChatGPT can help enhance your change management capability.

Inside the Pressure Cooker to Make Teams Better

Dmitry joined a large game development company as a Development Director. He was tasked with helping to build a new studio for them in a new location. The team he had to work with had already been working in this organization for 9+ years. That meant structures, connections, rituals, ways of working were quite set. The team had been used to building PVP (Player vs Player) experience products for 9+ years.

Six Tips for Facilitating a Kick-Ass Lean Coffee Session

Lean Coffee is an amazing tool for creating meaningful dialogue. Here are six awesome tips for super-charging your lean coffee session.

How Lallia Earned Her Storytelling Badge

OMG, She's Listening to Us!

This is Sarika's story that earned her the Lean Change Management Storytelling credential!

A Look Inside Lean Change Management Part II: Practicing What We Preach

In Part II of a Look Inside LCM, we'll show you how we solved our collaboration challenges and how we run things day to day.

The Day I Resisted Change

Fore score and twenty years ago, I had a change inflicted on me. And I didn't like it. Here's 6 ideas the 'change people' could have used to avoid my resistance.

A Look inside Lean Change Management

The Inner Game of Change Podcast

In this interview, I talk with Ali Juma of The Inner Game of Change about Lean Change Management, how change management is changing and more.

The Meaning of Co-Creation

Co-Creating a Better Future for Humanity

Episode 5 - A Return to Humanity

Lean Coffee #4 - New skills, Humane Workforces and Feedback Loops

Lean Coffee #3 - Will Organizations Act Differently in a Post-Covid world?

LCMA Virtual Lean Coffee #1

Lean Coffee #2 - Remote Tips, Stalled Changes and Humanity!

The Evolution of Digital Credentials

Certifications continue to appear weekly in all sorts of knowledge work. Since late 2018, we've been providing digital credentials and here's what we've learned, and what's next.

Creating Certainty in an Uncertain World

Agile says 'embrace uncertainty'. A better idea is figuring out how to reduce it.

Modernizing Change Communication

change communication is almost always training and newsletters…what would it take to shift towards modern practices that enable meaningful dialogue?

Change and Agile Leadership

Leadership has existed since the dawn of humankind. History shows us great leaders adapt to their context so what does 'agile' really change about that?

Making Time for Change

Change Management: A Look Back at 2018

What changed about change management in 2018 and what's in store for 2019?

Triggering Meaningful Dialogue with Storytelling

Support Structures for Change Agents

Change Readiness and Setting Expectations

Are You Ready for Change?

Digital Credentials over Certifications

Impact Matrix - 4 Categories of People Affected by Change

Finding Influencers...at the Bottom of Your Org Chart

We underestimate the power of influence networks in our organizations. Here are 5 tips for finding influencers at the bottom of the org chart, along with a podcast I recorded with Tamara Kleinberg of Inside Launchstreet.

Ritual-based Change versus Continuous Change

Happy Anniversary Lean Change Management!

LCM Podcast 16 - Debugging Bureaucracy

LCM Podcast 15 - What's it Like Living Through a SAFe Rollout

Reshaping our View of Agile Transformation

We didn't intentionally plan our way into a situation that warrants an agile transformation. We need to undo the damage through small, consistent interventions over time.

LCM Podcast 14 - Meaningful Change at National Leasing

In October 2015 National Leasing started a big change. A year later they shared their progress on this blog. In this episode, I talk with them about what happened now that the change program has been completed.

LCM Podcast 13 - Sociocracy with Jerry Koch-Gonzalez

We underestimate the importance of psychological safety, and meaningful conversations when it comes to running our organizations. In this episode, Jerry Koch-Gonzalez explains the 3 structures of sociocracy, why organizations are choosing it, how they're getting stuck, and what's getting them past those sticking points.

LCM Podcast 12 - Agile Change Management Lessons from the Field

LCM Podcast 11 - Brains and Ears

LCM Podcast 10 - How Organizational Change Mimics Social Movements

LCM Podcast 9 - Society's Effect on Organizational Change

Alternatives to Change Management Certifications

The Change Before the Change

LCM Podcast EP8 - Letting Go of Control

I was fortunate to be interviewed by Ro Gorrell and Charlotte Mawle for their upcoming Change Ignition podcast. In this episode we talk about simple solutions for integrating change management and agile teams, as well as how letting go as a change agent helps you keep your sanity, and helps people realize you're there to help, not to push change on them.

Is Your Organization Ready for Agile Change?

Change readiness assessments aren't a new idea...but there's an easier way to go about them!

EP7: The Happy Melly Ecosystem with Elizabeth Plouffe

Is Your Change Stuck?

There's No Such Thing as Change Resistance

Why Agile Breaks Your Organization

Minimum Viable Change Process

Creating Alignment for Enterprise Transformation

Untangling the Organizational Hairball

Change managers, OD people, and Agile Coaches all love our frameworks, tools and models. We like to "invent" things to help our clients make sense of their environments. What ever happened to facilitated conversations? Here's some ideas for how you can untangle the hairball that is your clients organization.

Using Creative Visuals to Show Progress

Successful Agile Transformation through Community Building

Removing the Mumbo-Jumbo from Change Management

Cause and Purpose, or Urgency for Change?

"Change or die!! Innovate for become obsolete!" This is the false urgency that Kotter warns about. Knowing the difference between urgency and false-urgency can be difficult. Maybe change agents should be focusing on something else to help organizations change.

LCM Podcast EP6 - Are Centralized Change Teams a Good Idea?

The Guiding Coalition - Kotter's 2nd step...but it is an outdated concept in change management or merely executed poorly by organizations? On this week's podcast, I'm joined by enterprise agile coach, Ty Crockett where we debate the pros and cons of centralized change teams.

Knowing Where to Look

Change certifications won't go away anytime soon...unfortunately...but these are 5 simple things you can try today that certification programs won't teach you.

What Shouldn't You Change?

In today’s world, the organizational lifespan is shrinking, and established organizations are trying to figure out how to remain relevant. Sometimes that means change, but sometimes it means keeping something that's working.

Using Storytelling in Change Management

Urgency for change is an outdated concept in change management. Cause and purpose for change is a more compelling way to help people align to transformational change. Learn how you can incorporate storytelling into change management by using a Storytelling Canvas.

Integrating Cultures with Lean Coffee

What happens when your organization is acquired and you have overlapping roles? Brock Argue tells us a story about they approached this problem, experiments they ran and what happened.

LCM Podcast EP5 - The Great Organizational Culture Debate

In EP4, Eric Lynn and I talked about changing culture and the concept of 'buy in'. A few people had their own thoughts about these topics! This episode is a response to EP4.

How much does change really hurt?

Sometimes there is more going on for people when change is introduced. This week's guest post comes from Lena Ross who is a change consultant, speaker and facilitator. She writes about how brain research is helping us understand more about how people process change.

3 Tips for Simplifying Change

Sometimes we over complicate change and put the focus on following our favourite model, tool, framework or method. In this interview with Richard Atherton, I suggest 3 simple things that can help you move your transformation forward.

LCM Podcast EP4: Culture - Can you measure it?

This week's podcast features Eric Lynn, founder of Culture Q's. We discuss culture change via conversations, whether you can measure culture and more!

People Must Be Told What To Do

"We have to tell our teams what to do or they just won’t do it." How many times have you thought this? How many times have you had a conversation like this?

LCM Podcast EP 3: Pop Psychology, Organizational Coaching and Agile + Org Dev

This week we feature a rebuttal of Episode 1 with Paul Gibbons. What did people think of the 1st show? Have a listen as we debate pop psychology, agile and OD and more!

LCM Podcast EP 2: Solving Wicked Problems with The Hot Seat

This episode features Salah Elleithy, Agile Coach, Trainer and founder of Spark Agility. Salah joined an open session with me at Agile 2015 where myself and a few other people tried out a technique called The Hot Seat. Salah recently tried this out with a client and in this episode we chat about why he wanted to try it, how he did it and what happened.

Lean Change Management Podcast

The first Lean Change Management podcast features Paul Gibbons, the author of The Science of Successful Organizational Change. In this episode we talk about what the Agile community can learn from the organizational development and change management communities.

The Marriage of Agile and Organizational Change Management

The Agile community groans when late adopters discover it as being the greatest thing ever. I'll wager most Agile practitioners don't realize everything in Agile has been stripped from ideas that are decades old. It doesn't matter where these ideas came from, let's merge ideas from Agile, OD, CM and HR in order to build resilient organizations.

Using Change Canvases - A Story from Agile 2015

Teams often feel they have had Agile pushed on them and they simply have to go along with whatever is pushed from above. Change canvases help people in teams take ownership of their changes that align with the organization's purpose.

Navigating Organizational Complexity at Agile 2015

Agile teams can fly under the radar until they bump up against the organizational boundaries. At that point, 'being Agile' and 'Agile mindset' discussions become useless for moving forward.

A Lean Change Starts with Insights

People process change differently. Sometimes you can be explicit about how people are affected by change and use that in your retrospective to provoke powerful discussions.

The Shelf-Life of a Change

The New Change Managers

Change Management is a relatively new profession. And it's changing rapidly. The more we learn, the more we realize that adapatability is the key, not blindly following a method. The New Change Manager is someone who understands what change management is all about.

3 Reasons Why You Should Build Your Own Change Method

Many practitioners cling to the method of choice, yet the creators of those methods like to say that change fails 70% of the time. In this post I explore why you should create your own change method.

Perspective Mapping in the Enterprise

How do you know the changes you're working on are the most important to the organization? In a large enterprise, this can be challenging. I sat down with Joanne Stone, Agile Evangelist for TELUS to hear her thoughts about applying Perspective Mapping in her 40,000+ organization.

Creating Alignment for Agile Change at Agile and Beyond 2015

Listen to April Jefferson's story about how she helped two teams and their management team transition to Agile by using strategic and team-level canvases that provoked deep conversations.

Announcing the First Lean Change Agent Facilitators!

Become a Lean Change Agent facilitator and get on the path to bring meaningful change into the lives of people all over the world.

Making Sense of Change with LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY™

I'm often asked which tool or artefact to start with when it comes to kicking off a change initiative. Well, it's not about the canvas, it's about the conversation! Here's a story of how a couple of people used LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY™ to start the alignment process around a change initiative.

The Change Equation is Wrong

Is there a change equation that, when followed, ensures successful change? I don't believe so, but read on and let me know what you think?

How HolidayCheck Got Started with Lean Change Management

Find out how HolidayCheck started their journey with Lean Change Management. It can be much more simple than you might think!

Change VS Transformation

We believe that change happens continuously and mainly should be owned by the people who do the work, thus the responsibility of the work, managing the work and managing how to work shouldn’t be separated. So we recommend to use the tool in a joint session with everyone who is affected by the change. - Stefan Haas

Inspiration Behind Lean Change Management - An InfoQ Interview

Lean Change Management is inspired by a variety of practices and many communities from agile to organizational development and neuroscience. Check out my recent interview with InfoQ about my upcoming talk at Darefest in Antwerp, Belguim.

Thinking Like a Change Architect

Architecture is a fixture in software and construction projects, but what can change agents learn by applying ideas from architecture to organizational change?

How Do We Get "Those People" To Stop Resisting!

Ah, the age-old question: How do we manage change resistance? This is the one and only strategy I know of to manage this problem.

Organizational Renovation

"Transformation" is vague term. It sounds good to say "we need to transform" but it doesn't prepare people in organizations for what they're going to need to tolerate while "construction" is in progress.

7 Wastes of Change Management

In manufacturing and software, "waste" is considered to be a bad thing. But what about change management? Is something that is more unpredictable and uncertain affected by the same types of waste?

Executing Change Initiatives with Agile Practices

Tools for Visualizing Complex Change

If all you have is hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Cute, but false. A hammer is just a tool, it doesn't tell you how to use it. Here are 4 tools and visualizations you can use to help you make sense of complex organizational changes.

Building Your Own Change Management Framework

People generally cling to what's familiar to them when it comes to choosing a change management framework. Of course, that preference might not be the right tool for the job. Here are some ideas for how to build your own change management framework.

Managing Change in Today's Digital World

Today's change management practices are not equipped to facilitate change in today's digital world. Learn 2 simple, yet powerful techniques for creating alignment for change by modernizing your change management practices.

Why Changes Should Be Called Experiments

Change agents have biases. Sometimes we make the changes we think makes the most sense. Sometimes those aren't the right changes though. Thinking about changes as being time-bound Experiments is a more effective way to manage change programs

How to Create Your Own Change Canvases

Lean Change Management will be released soon! Get a sneak-peek at some of the bonus material that will accompany the book!

Becoming a Lean Change Agent

Continuous Change

It's time to stop running change initiatives like projects with a start date, end date and budget. Can we enable continuos change to manage today's pace of change?

Changing How We Think About Change

Is the way we approach organizational change fundamentally broken? It's time to stop planning changes behind closed doors and co-creating it with the people affected.

Agile Transformation and Organizational Change Management

The Agile Community and Change Management communities have similar reasons for why change fails. Is there a relation between them? What can Agile learn from Change Management and vice versa?

Using Agile Practices with ADKAR

There is much change management can learn from the Agile community, and vice-versa! Learn how you can apply Agile practices within the ADKAR change management model.

Standardizing Change Management?

Standardized change management processes is what has gotten us into this mess. Can a better standard help improve how organizations change?

Managing the Chaos of Organizational Change

Organizational change is hard. It'll be a whole lot harder if people on your change team are more concerned with being right than doing the right thing. Learn how to create alignment with your team.

Creating Alignment for Agile Transformation with Canvases

From the Lean Canvas to the Business Model Canvas, there are many variations on "1 page plans" to help organizations solve business problems. This post will show you how to use canvases to manage your Agile Transformation.

Modernizing Change Management with Agile

Navigating Organizational Change

Change is Messy

Acceptance Test Driven Book Writing

Writing a book is much more difficult than I thought. Learn how I used storymapping to help write the second edition with the help of a structural editor.

A Custom Change Canvas

People I've talk to about Lean Change and organizations I've used Lean Change with all seem to love the idea of change canvases. For me, I like to use them as thinking and sense-making tools. They make planning for change a whole lot faster and they do what they are intended to do. Provoke conversations.

How Lean Change Management Helps Traditional Change Management

Learn how Lean Change Management can help traditional, plan-driven approaches to change.

Vote on the Next Cover Image for Lean Change Management!

Green? Yellow? Pink? What colour should the next cover of Lean Change Management be? Vote!

A Peek at the 2nd Edition

Building Capability with Transformation Design

Lean Change at Agile 2013

Interview with Jason Little About Lean Change

Agile Transformation with Lean Change

Version 1 is Released!

Chapter 5 is Now Available!

Perspective Mapping

Chapters 3 and 4 Now Available!

Lean Change at Agile and Beyond 2013

Gerry Kirk and Jason Little presented Lean Change Management at Agile and Beyond in 2013. Check out the presentation here.

Lean Change on Lean Pub

Hacking a Conservative Organization with Lean Coffee

Lean Change at LESS 2012

These are the slides I presented at LESS 2012 chronicling the evolution of Lean Change Management. This talk won best talk for the Lean Startup track in Tallin, Estonia!