Coming 2025

BETTER CHANGE: Delivering on the True Promise of Change Management

From the Introduction:

The discipline of change management offers models, frameworks, and practices for helping people work effectively with and through change. In other words ― influencing people to sign on, buy in, change their behaviors, and work to deliver rescoped organizational outcomes.

If this sounds like a tough gig, it is.  It is widely estimated that two out of every three organizational change efforts fail; some estimates are higher.

The promise of change management is that its protocols and practices result in both the organization and its people benefiting as envisioned from planned organizational change.

Despite well-intentioned efforts to manage change, each stakeholder ― organizations, and people ― has rarely benefited as envisioned.

The change management promise is empty.

Something important is missing…

My e-Books

Available for free pdf download

A New Beach

Insights for Better Change

Thinking About the Box

Why Structure and Design Matter So Much

Don’t Climb That Pole!

Exploring the Push-Pull of Culture

Dr. Pepper’s Shadow

Leadership Traps, Trips, and Tropes

My Organization Development Consulting

  • Executive strategy sessions - design and facilitation

  • Organization design and culture

  • Leadership assessment and development

  • Team assessment and development

  • Talent management

  • Change management

  • Performance management

What My Clients Say

  • I want to thank you for your superior presentation about how to manage change (“Peace”) that you did at our IT all hands town hall. With the current level of stress and uncertainty across our IT teams, it is tricky – at best – to address the topic of how individuals can deal with a tough situation over which they have no control. Both your content and how you presented it struck a wonderful balance, and was received positively by our associates.

    - Mike, CIO

  • Whether contemplating a major reorganization, presenting on change management, or discussing team dynamics and motivation, I have found John to be thoughtful, insightful, and most importantly…thought provoking. John’s overall skill set is rare, and any organization will benefit greatly from his contribution.

    – Mike, Operations Executive

  • John was instrumental in helping me design, reorg, and build a top notch team. He was incredibly well respected, always brought a valuable perspective and demonstrated knowledge and skills in organizational design and human resource management that I have not seen before in my 10+ year executive career.

    – Simona, CIO

  • Retreat feedback was very strong. Specific comments were that we “got a lot done” “it felt like we had some actionable items that we can build on” “I was really surprised that John gave his strong opinions. That was good.” “I expected to get into the book more but the conversation we had ended up working really well.

    Thank you for being a part of our team and facilitating the session. You did exactly what I remembered and it was what I hoped that we would get through. Now it is up to us to make it “sticky.”

    – Suzanna, HR Director

  • In working with John I found him to be an insightful and thought provoking leader. He challenged our conventional thinking and helped us explore alternative solutions to our issues.

    – Steve, Engineering Leader

  • John brought many tools and insights to our team to improve trust, collaboration, and respect among co-workers. His insight and business savvy combined with his trustworthy personality was among the best I have had the pleasure to work with.

    – Barbara, Marketing Leader

  • John is an outstanding leader and can provide the focus for any organization to hit on what is important and dig down to the root cause. He knows how to get results.

    – Steve, Operations Leader

About me

I have worked as an organization development (OD) consultant for over 25 years, contributing in the areas of organization design, talent management, leadership development, culture and change.

My OD work often included helping leaders and change specialists plan and execute change management activities in support of strategic initiatives. With regularity I witnessed the stress of the change management struggle.

In 2012 I began blogging on change, culture, and design: johnponders, about life at work, mostly.

I subsequently curated the blog content to create four e-books.

I have earned a Master of Science in Organization Development from Loyola University Chicago and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from the University of Illinois.

I am married to wife Jamie for 46 years and have one adult son (Jesse). Living in Elgin Illinois USA, I am a life-long Cubs fan still basking in the glory of their epic 2016 World Series win… and hopeful there will be another in my lifetime!