Joy at Work Thinking
Written by Roxanne Brown
Change is an active learning process. Even when the destination is clear (most often it's not, even in the most stable times), the path there involves a lot of test-and-learn activity. We like the "learn your way forward" way of thinking about change, or "decide-change-...
The founder and host of the Change & Innovation Summit, April Callis Birchmeier, interviews Roxanne Brown. Roxanne shares her thoughts about how to work with leaders and how to develop layers of change leadership.
Part of the What-if Series: Risks Change Professionals navigate every day. What do you do as a Change Professional when you've just started on a project that's been in progress for a long time already?
Many Change Professionals believe that they're at a disadvantage when they don't start on a proje...
Written by Roxanne Brown
Imagine this: You love your work. You love being absorbed by it. You feel your life’s purpose reflected in the work you do and you can see the impact it’s having. Your family and friends are proud of you and the work you do. They can see why it’s important, why it drive...
Written by Roxanne Brown
If you think change will be hard, it will be. We’ve seen it over and over again. If you believe your people can’t handle change or don’t like change then you are pretty much guaranteeing that it won’t go well. If you believe that your people can handle change and just n...
Written by Roxanne Brown
The first time we created Joy at Work on a team (a huge group of 250 people located all over the country), everyone asked us how we did it…
Was it more…
• Team lunches?
• Ice cream socials?
• Scavenger hunts?
• Roleplay simulations?
• Game competitions?
• Office spa days?
• Jug...
Written by Roxanne Brown
Are you an early adopter at work? Changing to something new while the folks around you haven’t changed yet takes courage.
Are you an influencer at work? Changing influences people around you to change too.
Are you slow to adopt changes at work? If you’ve been burned in th...
Written by Roxanne Brown
It’s not usually WHAT you want to change that upsets people, it’s HOW they feel they (and others) are treated in the process that is most upsetting. The best you can do is be intentional about how you want it to feel and decide what must be true for that to happen. Then...
Written by Roxanne Brown
As a leader, you do things all the time that no one will ever know you did. No one will ever know how you struggled over the decisions, the work, the sacrifice you made or the arrows you took. It’s impossible for others to know. They aren’t you and they don’t sit where ...
Written by Roxanne Brown
Last week I came across an HBR article with the title: Gen-X is More Creative than Gen-Y, According to Harvard.
Being a Gen-Xer, naturally, it caught my attention. I didn’t post it anywhere because the article seemed pretty light-weight and the comparison definitely di...
Written by Roxanne Brown
Before change can happen the leader must change first. This seems pretty straightforward but applying it can be challenging!
When change is introduced, people notice how the leader is modeling the change they want to see in others – or not.
If you think you’re fine, it’s ...
Written by Roxanne Brown
As a leader, sometimes you need to be a calming force for your people when change is happening. Sometimes you need to inspire and motivate but sometimes being a calming force is what people need.
This applies to the Change Professional too. Leaders and Change Professiona...
