Seth Kahan on Big Change

Over the years, I’ve done a lot of change work, with both small companies where everyone is co-located and large organizations where staff is distributed worldwide. I’ve found the one thing they all have in common is the need for staff to understand the change initiative.  They need to understand, at its essence, what it’s […]

I do a lot of work on Grand Challenges – big, bold goals designed to change the world for the better – and they require alliances to create a unified thrust. All Grand Challenges require building a leadership strategy team – the inner circle – that will steer the initiative by working together to seize

I am engaged in a large-scale change initiative with a major institution. The work reminds me of the success I’ve had helping other organizations – like the World Bank and Royal Dutch Shell – with culture change. The major lesson learned from all these works is that communities – groups of professionals who share a

I’ve had the opportunity to preside over ten large-scale change initiatives in complex decentralized organizations, some of which span the globe. One of the things that I’ve come to learn is how organic really good change is. We live in the era of knowledge work, significantly different than the manufacturing of the industrial age. Knowledge

  INVITE June 9th Innovation Panel. Register here. No charge. Associations must innovate, yet not every association takes it seriously. Innovation should never stop, and with all the disruption in our world, there is a real and urgent need for it. Working to reopen the economy while still dealing with the pandemic, supply chain interruptions, issues

A Common Agenda is what propels a successful coalition. The Common Agenda is the vision of the future that all coalition participants are invested in.

My work helps leaders succeed at Grand Challenges – big, bold goals that take on problems that have gone unsolved. How do Grand Challenges solve problems? Through social movements. When everybody pitches in, the return is remarkable. Imagine having millions or even hundreds of millions of people working on behalf of your issue. That’s what

When it comes to moving members, partners, and the public to action, nothing has the power of a social movement. Thousands put in a little effort, and the ROI is staggering. What’s more, a movement succeeds where carrots and sticks fail. Learn what it takes to rally your constituents in ways they find compelling and

While at the World Bank, I worked on a project to build 120 global communities of practice. Through my work, I learned what it takes to bring groups of professionals together and guide their focus to the topics most important to their sectors. One advantage of working with a community of professionals is the opportunity

One of the most important relationships within an association is between the CEO and the Board. The Board’s role is to envision and develop strategy, and the CEO is there to operationalize that strategy, and most often, serves as a strategic partner. The relationship between the CEO and the Board can make or break an