Presentation Summary:

Making Change Stick: From Good Intentions to Lasting Impact explores why organizational change initiatives succeed or fail, and what leaders can do to create meaningful, sustainable results.

The presentation examines the intersection of organizational culture, strategy, and communication. Drawing on established change theories, the presentation explores why employees adopt change at different speeds and experience change in different ways. It also examines the evolving workplace, including the influence of artificial intelligence, changing employee expectations, and the importance of understanding what motivates people. Throughout, the presentation emphasizes that effective change leadership requires more than a well-designed strategy; it requires an understanding of human behavior, organizational culture, and the emotional dimensions of change.

The presentation introduces a practical, four-phase framework for making organizational change stick:

·      Create understanding,

·      Engage,

·      Enable,

·      Sustain.

Through storytelling, building urgency, identifying influential employees, creating hope, reinforcing individual agency, and encouraging courageous action, leaders can move employees from awareness to meaningful participation. Sustaining change requires equally deliberate efforts to measure progress, celebrate successes, reinforce new behaviors, and adapt along the way. Using real-world examples, research-informed practices, and interactive discussions, the presentation challenges participants to examine their own organizational cultures and identify opportunities to lead change more effectively. Ultimately, the central message is that successful organizational change is not simply about implementing a new strategy or process; it is about winning hearts and minds, changing behaviors, and creating the conditions for lasting impact.

Objectives:

•       Review and discuss organizational change theory

•       Understand how to create a concrete plan for making change stick and the associated steps

•       Discuss situations in our “real life” work in which effective change leadership can be improved by these steps

 About the Presenter: 

David Watts is the Principal of WattsUp Human Resource Solutions (wattsuphr.com), which provides fractional HR leadership, HR stabilization and special people project management throughout northern New England while serving clients nationwide. Powered by SRV HR (srvhr.com), WattsUp has the experience to do the work well and the technology to do it efficiently, leading to more effective processes, higher employee engagement and better outcomes for organizations and their people.

David has twenty years of success in healthcare, manufacturing, retail, and other spaces, including employment at Dartmouth Health, Simon Pearce and Kendal at Hanover, as well as officer level leadership roles at several non-profit organizations.

David earned a Master of Science degree in Labor Studies from the University of Massachusetts and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology (industrial/organizational concentration) from the University of Connecticut. Additionally, David completed a one-year Chief Human Resource Officer program at the Aresty Institute of Executive Education at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, in 2024.