I got excited today by Alan Deutschman’s article in Fast Company–The Three Keys to Change. It is an introduction to his new book, the full title of which is, Change or Die: Three Keys to Change at Work and In Life.

I have written here about change; mostly about the conditions under which change is most like to occur. My notion has been that if those of us who facilitate change can help to create those conditions, then we have done our jobs. In very broad terms, that amounts to doing four things: introducing a real yet managable amount of distress, facilitating articulation of a vision, improving people’s change skills and helping them identify first steps, and elucidating the cost of not changing.

Deutschman has gone a step further, or maybe deeper. He unravels what it takes when people are really stuck, when the status quo persists even in the face of an obvious need to change. His three “keys to change” are relate, repeat, reframe.

I’m going to resist the temptation to flesh out the keys to change here. Better you go and read the article (and maybe the book). I’ll leave it at this: Deutschman’s keys to change map perfectly with my experience as a change agent to people and organizations, as well as with my experience with change in my own life.

Looks like hot stuff to me!

Here are links to three previous posts about change at this blog:
Three Principles of Change
Don’t Shield Them From Distress
Don’t Shield Them From Distress: An Example