Description

Change is no longer an occasional initiative - it is the operating environment. As organizations move from 2026 into 2027, leaders and managers are being asked to navigate AI-driven transformation, shifting workforce expectations, new operating models, cost and productivity pressures, reorganizations, evolving customer demands, and an accelerating pace of technology adoption - often simultaneously. This practical, fast-moving 90-minute webinar provides a complete guide to leading change with greater clarity, speed, engagement, and accountability.

Participants will learn how to diagnose the real change challenge, build a compelling case for action, anticipate resistance, communicate through uncertainty, engage managers and employees, sustain performance during transition, and turn change from a disruptive event into an organizational capability. Whether you are leading a major transformation or helping a team adapt to continuous change, this session will provide immediately usable frameworks, questions, tools, and action steps for making change work in 2026, 2027, and beyond.

Learning Objectives:-

By participating, you will:

• Understand what is different about change management as organizations move from 2026 into 2027 - and why traditional, linear change approaches are often insufficient.
• Distinguish between the technical side of change and the human side of change, and understand why both must be managed together.
• Assess change readiness, stakeholder impact, organizational capacity, and the risks that can derail an initiative before implementation begins.
• Build a clear and credible case for change that answers the questions employees and managers are really asking: Why this? Why now? What does it mean for me?
• Identify the most common sources of resistance - including uncertainty, loss of control, workload concerns, change fatigue, skills gaps, distrust, and competing priorities - and respond constructively.
• Create a practical stakeholder and influence strategy that identifies sponsors, champions, skeptics, key influencers, and groups most affected by the change.
• Communicate change with greater transparency and consistency, including how to communicate when decisions are incomplete, circumstances are changing, or leaders do not yet have all the answers.
• Equip frontline and middle managers to become effective translators, coaches, and reinforcement agents rather than passive messengers of change.
• Use AI and digital tools appropriately to support change analysis, communication, training, feedback, knowledge sharing, and adoption while preserving human judgment and trust.
• Protect productivity, psychological safety, employee engagement, and organizational capacity during periods of significant transition.
• Measure adoption and business impact using leading and lagging indicators - not simply whether implementation milestones were completed.
• Develop a practical 30-60-90 day roadmap for moving a change initiative from announcement through adoption, reinforcement, and sustained results.

Areas Covered:-

• The New Change Management Environment: 2026 into 2027
  • Why continuous change is replacing episodic change
  • AI, automation, workforce, operating-model, cost, regulatory, and customer-driven change
  • The cumulative impact of overlapping initiatives and change saturation
  • Why speed without alignment can create rework, resistance, and burnout
• Change Management Fundamentals - What Still Matters
  • Change leadership versus change management
  • The technical transition and the human transition
  • A practical change lifecycle: define, align, prepare, implement, adopt, reinforce
  • Why sponsorship, trust, communication, capability, and reinforcement remain critical
• Diagnosing the Change Before Launching the Change
  • Defining the business problem and desired future state
  • Change readiness and organizational capacity
  • Stakeholder impact analysis: who gains, loses, changes, learns, or decides differently?
  • Identifying dependencies, competing initiatives, risks, and likely friction points
• Building the Case for Change
  • Creating a concise change story: Why, Why Now, What, How, and What It Means
  • Connecting organizational priorities to team-level realities
  • Making tradeoffs and consequences visible
  • Creating urgency without creating unnecessary anxiety
• Stakeholder Alignment and Sponsorship
  • Mapping influence, impact, commitment, and resistance
  • Clarifying the role of executives, sponsors, managers, HR, project teams, and informal influencers
  • Building a sponsor coalition rather than relying on a single executive
  • Recognizing alignment problems before they become employee resistance
• Understanding and Managing Resistance
  • Why resistance is information - not merely opposition
  • Common causes: uncertainty, workload, identity, competence, trust, control, history, and perceived loss
  • Separating legitimate concerns from avoidance or noncompliance
  • Listening, involving, coaching, negotiating, escalating, and setting expectations
• Communicating Change in an Era of Uncertainty
  • What employees need to hear before, during, and after a change
  • Communicating what we know, what we do not know, and what happens next
  • Using multiple channels without creating message overload
  • Creating feedback loops and correcting rumors, ambiguity, and inconsistent messages quickly
• The Manager's Role in Making Change Work
  • Managers as sense-makers and translators of change
  • Preparing managers before broad employee communication
  • Coaching employees through uncertainty, learning, and performance expectations
  • Providing managers with talking points, FAQs, escalation paths, and decision guidance
• AI, Technology, and Change Management
  • Using AI to analyze stakeholder concerns, draft communications, create FAQs, develop training, summarize feedback, and identify patterns
  • Where human judgment, empathy, context, and accountability remain essential
  • Managing AI-related fear, role redesign, skills transitions, and trust
  • Responsible-use guardrails for AI-supported change activities
• Managing Change Fatigue, Capacity, and Well-Being
  • Recognizing change saturation and initiative overload
  • Prioritizing, sequencing, pausing, and stopping work
  • Balancing urgency with sustainable execution
  • Maintaining psychological safety while preserving accountability and performance
• From Implementation to Adoption
  • Why 'go-live' is not the finish line
  • Building new behaviors into workflows, meetings, metrics, systems, and management routines
  • Training versus true capability development
  • Reinforcing desired behaviors and addressing regression to old ways of working
• Measuring Whether the Change Is Actually Working
  • Leading indicators: awareness, understanding, readiness, participation, capability, usage, and behavior
  • Lagging indicators: productivity, quality, customer outcomes, cost, risk, retention, and business results
  • Using pulse feedback and adoption data to make course corrections
  • Avoiding vanity metrics that measure activity rather than impact
• A Practical 30-60-90 Day Change Roadmap
  • First 30 days: diagnose, align, map stakeholders, establish governance, and build the change story
  • Days 31-60: engage, communicate, prepare managers, build capability, test, and gather feedback
  • Days 61-90: drive adoption, remove barriers, measure behavior and results, reinforce, and adjust
  • Creating a repeatable change capability for 2027 and beyond
• Change Management Toolkit - Practical Takeaways
  • Change readiness questions
  • Stakeholder impact and influence map
  • Resistance diagnostic
  • Change communication checklist
  • Manager conversation questions
  • Adoption scorecard and 30-60-90 day action plan

Would you like to understand what is different about change management as organizations move from 2026 into 2027 - and why traditional, linear change approaches are often insufficient?

How about building a clear and credible case for change that answers the questions employees and managers are really asking: Why this? Why now? What does it mean for me?

Would it help for you to be able to develop a practical 30-60-90 day roadmap for moving a change initiative from announcement through adoption, reinforcement, and sustained results?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, come laugh, listen and learn as Chris DeVany helps us implement an Action Plan to facilitate change and improve performance!