Architecting Change with Beth Banks Cohn, PhD

“Most problems in companies today is that they have terrible managers,” explains Beth Banks Cohn, PhD. Beth is the president and founder of Adra Change Architects and has over 30 years of experience as an accomplished organizational consultant. Today, Beth talks about how to most effectively go about architecting change within organizations.

There has been an overall transformation to the way organizations operate after the pandemic. One good thing is that there seems to be a larger emphasis on employee development. More companies than ever are offering employees at all levels phone or video coaching. Not all changes are being universally seen as positive. Companies are still determining how they want to handle changes like the prevalence of people desiring remote work while higher up executives tend to wish for a return to in office work. There is also even more turnover than before and that lack of retention is causing a loss of knowledge within organizations when an employee leaves prior to teaching someone else what they know. The majority of the problems facing organizations today could be fixed simply through hiring and promoting better people-managers. In the end, an organization with terrible managers will not be successful.

It can be challenging to architect change in organizations. To do it properly you must have some basic understanding of both the business of change and the business which the change is being introduced into. Without proper management, it will not be possible to enact effective change within an organization.

• “If you're just using AI to sort through resumes and then kick out the five that have the exact words that you're looking for, then you're missing lots of potentially great employees that could bring even more to the workplace than somebody who will figure out what words you're supposed to be using.” (20:42-20:57 | Beth)
• “There are now companies out there who provide phone coaching or video coaching for all employees at all levels so that everybody can get coaching. And to me, that's a huge emphasis on development that wasn't in place before.” (21:08-21:23 | Beth)
• “Most problems in companies today is that they have terrible managers. And what they value in employees that makes them promote these people into managers has nothing to do with their ability to be a manager.” (22:40-22:57 | Beth)