Leadership of Change® - Change Management Body of Knowledge (CMBoK) Volume 10

Change Management Dilettante©: Refers to an individual who engages in change management practices without a deep understanding, commitment, or passion for the discipline. They dabble in the field without serious intent or expertise. This lack of genuine engagement can contribute to high change and transformation failure rates globally. They can be identified by twelve key traits such as happy-clappy change practitioner syndrome, a superficial grasp of change management concepts, and a dependency on trendy buzzwords. Often, they lack practical organisational experience and engage selectively with stakeholders, promoting groupthink. Their unstructured approach to change, combined with limited project management knowledge and avoidance of continuous learning, undermines effective transformation efforts. What characterises their approach is a persistent leadership avoidance syndrome, strategically sidestepping engagement with the key stakeholders who control the organisation's critical resources, decision-making bodies, and strategic agenda time.

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Leadership of Change® Volume 10 highlights how the key traits and characteristics of change management dilettantes not only fail to deliver successful or sustainable change but have massive negative impacts. They not only impede progress but also erode trust within organisations. Their superficial approach often leads to disillusionment among stakeholders, fostering resistance to future change initiatives. This creates a detrimental cycle where poorly executed transformations diminish confidence in the discipline, making it more challenging for skilled practitioners to secure buy-in for critical projects. Additionally, these individuals tend to prioritise superficial strategies over understanding the underlying organisational change complexities and behavioural dynamics essential for effective change. This oversight exacerbates misalignment between strategic objectives and execution, resulting in fragmented efforts and wasted resources. Volume 10 advocates for a fundamental shift in how organisations approach change, emphasising the need for senior leadership to acknowledge its complexity. Delivering successful change cannot be delegated to dilettantes; it requires active and proactive involvement from the leadership team, ensuring that their most capable individuals are assigned to change programmes for the organisation's future success.

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The appalling consequences of change management dilettantes are direct and systemic, devastating not just organisations but sometimes economic landscapes. In our hyper-evolving global landscape, leadership of change requires excellence, yet we are drowning in a sea of incompetence. The organisational charade and insanity begin when leadership teams, infected with dilettante syndrome, systematically dismiss change management's critical importance. This book exposes the devastating acts of change management malpractice: superficial stakeholder engagement, buzzword-driven transformation strategies, avoidance of genuine organisational complexity, perpetuating groupthink, selective information manipulation, strategic leadership evasion, trendy but empty change methodologies, resistance to continuous learning, neglecting project management fundamentals, undermining genuine change practitioners, and creating illusions of progress. These dilettantes repeatedly deploy unsuccessful strategies, hiding behind compliant followers while systematically eroding organisational potential. The repercussions are catastrophic: innovation stagnates, opportunities vanish, and transformation becomes a costly illusion. We must initiate a ruthless revolution in leadership of change—dismantling the dilettante ecosystem and reconstructing a robust, accountable approach to organisational transformation. Only through this radical paradigm shift can we resurrect the true potential of change management in our relentlessly evolving world.​