Lucinda Carney - How to be a Change Superhero: The business toolkit to help you to do change better

How to be a Change Superhero is a must-read for change practitioners who wish to succeed. It is a compact and invaluably pragmatic guide to managing successful change and we all know how hard that is! Lucinda brings a fresh and pragmatic approach to the subject. While she reveals learnings from her favourite academics and experts, and covers the process and structure of change, the main value of this excellent book is how it covers the critical subject of people how to motivate, how to communicate, how to listen, how to empathise, how to corroborate to deliver the change you need. I loved it!

Campbell Macpherson, author of The Change Catalyst (2017), 2018 Business Book of the Year, British Business Book Awards

How to be a Change Superhero is a wonderfully pragmatic guide for anyone involved in organizational or business change. The book covers the role of the individual in change, giving a practical insight into how people react and invariably providing grounded, realistic advice on how best to deal with the inevitable tricky reactions that tend to happen as people interact. There are a lot of books covering the theory of change, but this is a rare foray into a more practical approach, and an excellent one at that. Whilst there is no shortage of real-life examples dropped in there is also coverage of some of the classic theories in this space, always explained in an accessible fashion.

David DSouza, Membership Director of the CIPD; Fellow of the Learning Performance Institute, the Centre for Evidence-Based Management

Change happens. We all know it and were either causing change, or were being affected by it. This is true in life and especially in organizations. Lucinda Carney takes the reality of organizational change and gives it definition and form so that we can lead change instead of being its victim. This book is solid from its first word until its last. You need to have a copy of this book sitting at the ready so that you can be the Change Superhero you were meant to be!

Steve Browne, author of HR On Purpose: Developing Deliberate People Passion (2017)

The only constant is change, as every Leader and HR professional knows. But its not always an easy process and this book gives you everything you need and much more to be a highly effective catalyst for change and make lasting organisational improvements. Lead the change you seek and do it in an informed and effective manner as a fully charged Change Superhero.

Ruth Cornish, CEO, Amelore Consulting

Change can be painful weve all had it thrust upon us at some point or have been on the receiving end of a badly implemented change management process. Drawing on her years of experience in the field of change, Lucinda has demystified what is required for successful change to happen. Bursting at the seams with theories and concepts made relevant and digestible, Lucindas engaging tone and pace means that you whizz through each chapter, absorbing practical and realistic advice as you go. This is going to be in the well-thumbed and highlighted section of my bookcase!

Jo Keeler, Managing Partner, Belbin

First published in Great Britain by Practical Inspiration Publishing, 2020

Lucinda Carney, 2020

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

All rights reserved. This book, or any portion thereof, may not be reproduced without the express written permission of the author.

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

Contents

Acknowledgements

ell, all I can say is that this has been a long time coming. I had the idea for this book almost ten years ago but it took the ten-day business book proposal challenge by Alison Jones at Practical Inspiration Publishing to get it out of my head and onto the page. Thank you to Michelle Parry-Slater for signposting me to Alison in the first place; she is brilliant.

Being the CEO of a software business while writing a book is a challenge, so I must first thank my husband and business partner Chris Carney and the whole team at Actus Software who kept everything ticking over brilliantly when my head had to be in the book rather than in the business. Thanks particularly to Gemma Scott, who has had the joy of editing various aspects of my business writing and politely calls me out when I dont make sense. Huge thanks also to my neighbour and good friend Will Cameron, who stepped in at the final hour when I had bitten off more than I could chew regarding editing the manuscript even if he has edited out all the exclamation marks except this one!

Much of my early experience around managing change came from my internal learning and organizational development roles at Siemens and Pfizer. Since 2009 this has multiplied through my consultancy work at Advance Change Ltd (which also trades as Actus). This has given me access to hundreds of public, private and not-for-profit organizations with countless different People Professionals (Change Superheroes) dealing with their own cultural challenges. Thank you to everyone who has contributed with their experiences and challenges, which have taught me so much and hopefully enriched this book for others by sharing real examples.

My teenage children Emma and Sammy should be recognized for being so positive and supportive as well as patient with the Mummy has to write her book now interruptions to this years summer holiday and countless weekends. The fact that they are vaguely impressed that I have written and published a book means a lot to me. Unfortunately, neither of my parents are alive to see this but my father Dr David Harley was a huge book lover and I would hope that seeing his daughter make it into print would also have made him very proud.

Im a huge pragmatist so I have tried to keep this book as accessible and practical as possible. With this in mind, at the end of each chapter there is a short case study designed to illustrate some of the points made within that chapter. I have kept them anonymous to protect the innocent; however, I would like to extend sincere thanks to the following contributors: Kim Bradford, Willorna Brock, Teresa Cameron, Karen Gill, Steve Graham, Sophie Haylock, Cat Hase, Steve Jones, Craig Marshall, Ali Nutley, Jennifer Scherler and Fran Trousdale. Thank you to Sheila Lardner, a long-time training colleague and friend, for the blue-bag-and-potatoes analogy and other inspiration, and to Grant Whiteing for the illustrations.

Finally, thanks to you, the reader, for picking this book out of all the others that you could have chosen. I truly hope that you find it practical and inspiring.

About the author

ucinda Carney is a chartered psychologist with many years of corporate experience as a People Professional (HR and Learning and Development). She personally initiated and drove many cultural change initiatives within organizations as an internal Change Agent and has supported countless more through her consultancy firm Advance Change Ltd.