Pictured: me at the World Bank, where I lived through two change initiatives in the mid-1990s, both called Knowledge Management. Same organization. Same label. Completely different outcomes.
The first effort looked unstoppable. A small group of world-class thinkers. A dedicated budget. Closed meetings. Impressive technology demos. After a year, almost nothing had reached the organization. The energy never escaped the room.
One night, as I was writing my resignation to that team, frustrated with their outreach, Steve Denning stopped by. He was leading a parallel effort that treated knowledge as a human system, with technology as an enabler. He asked me for one hour.
That hour changed everything.
Steve’s team had no funding, no authority, and one part-time assistant. What we did have was engagement. We talked openly about what we were doing. We listened. We invited critics in. We built communities around a shared purpose.
Two years later, that tiny team had grown to six people, sparked more than 120 communities, influenced hundreds of lending projects, secured $60 million in annual funding, and helped shape work that touched millions of lives.
Same institution. Same challenge. The difference was engagement.
From those experiences came seven lessons I still use today:
- Communicate so people get it and spread it. I have conversation frameworks and message-testing checklists that show how to spark cascades of dialogue.
- Energize your most valuable players. I use practical tools to identify, engage, and activate the people who matter most.
- Understand the territory of change. I rely on listening maps and diagnostics to reveal cultural currents and hidden constraints.
- Accelerate change through communities that perform. I have step-by-step guidance for launching and sustaining high-impact communities.
- Generate dramatic surges in progress. I use event design checklists that compress months of progress into days.
- Break through logjams. I have SWAT-style approaches for turning obstacles into forward motion.
- WorkLifeSuccess sustains high performance. I use simple practices and reflections that help leaders stay grounded under pressure.
If any of these lessons caught your attention, reply and tell me what you are most interested in. I’m happy to send over the deeper thinking, tools, or checklists that go with it.
