“We don’t drive change. Change happens. What we need to help is help with transition, because change is more physical and transition is more emotional and more human..”— Zhanel Ahearne
Show Summary
Change is often treated as a process to manage, but what happens when we center the human experience instead? In this episode, Oana Amaria sits down with organizational development practitioners Jacqueline Rosenberg and Zhanel Ahearne to explore what it really means to navigate change inside organizations.
Together, they unpack the difference between change and transition, reframing change as something inevitable while transition is the emotional and psychological journey people experience in response to it. Through stories from their work with global organizations, the conversation explores why transformation efforts often struggle when leaders focus only on systems, timelines, and communication plans while overlooking loss, resistance, trust, and human complexity.
Join us for a thoughtful conversation on leading through uncertainty, supporting people through transition, and why sustainable transformation begins by putting humans at the center of change.
Learning Highlights From This Episode:
- Why resistance should be viewed as valuable information rather than a barrier
- How loss, identity, and uncertainty shape people’s responses to change
- Why leadership behavior matters more than communication plans or frameworks
- How transparency, listening, and empathy help leaders build trust during uncertainty
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About Our Guests
Jacqueline Rosenberg PhD
Jacqueline is a global organization development and change leader who has spent more than two decades helping organizations navigate transformation with clarity, humanity, and occasionally a healthy sense of humour. Founder of Prima Via Consulting, named after the concept, that every meaningful transformation begins with a first step, an assessment of the new context, followed by another first step, Jacqueline specializes in helping leaders and teams make sustainable change actually stick. With a career delivering work in 20+ countries across the private, public, and non-profit sectors, she brings a rare mix of behavioural science, strategic insight, and calm pragmatism to the complex world of transformation. Known for challenging conventional thinking with warmth and wit, Jacqueline works with organizations to build cultures where people and performance thrive together. Having lived and worked across Switzerland, the UK, and Singapore, she offers an international perspective on leadership, belonging, and what it really takes to make change stick, helping organizations evolve in ways that are both impactful and deeply human.
Email: Jacqueline@primaviaconsulting.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacqueline-rosenberg1
Zhanel Ahearne
Zhanel is a Gestalt-informed organisational development practitioner who works alongside organisations navigating complex change. With over 20 years’ experience, she partners with senior leaders and People & Culture teams to support culture change, leadership development, and organisational transformation during periods of growth, restructuring, and transition.
She has worked across sectors including energy, industrial, e-commerce, and professional services, supporting organisations ranging from global multinationals such as Shell, BP, Philip Morris International, and Altrad to scaling businesses such as Haypp Group. Having lived in Egypt, Kazakhstan, and the UK, she brings a genuine cross-cultural perspective to her work, with work experience spanning Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and Asia.
Her work sits at the intersection of strategy, culture, and human dynamics. Zhanel looks beyond formal structures and processes to understand the patterns, relationships, and behaviours shaping how work gets done. Bringing a systemic lens, she helps leaders build awareness, strengthen accountability, and navigate complexity with greater clarity and intention.
Her approach combines deep organisational diagnosis with targeted interventions that create practical and sustainable impact. From understanding organisational dynamics and leadership patterns through to designing and facilitating change initiatives, she focuses on translating insight into meaningful shifts in leadership, culture, collaboration, and organisational performance.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zhaneladilova/
Full Transcript
Oana Amaria: Hello and welcome back to Stories from the Field. I’m Oana Amaria. I’m the founder and practice leader at Firefly. I’m so happy to be here with some very good friends of mine. I was chatting behind the scenes before we started that the contact episode was something that just kind of emerged, which is very Gestalty. I loved how natural and how beautifully we demonstrated contact without trying. And so I reached out to Zhanel and Jacq, and I really wanted to talk about what happens after contact and really give this perspective of what leaders see. So this episode is called From Contact to Change. And because the world is going through so much change, I thought no better experts to bring in and have this conversation. So I’m so excited to introduce Jacqueline Rosenberg and Zhanel Ahearne. I’d like to just ask you both to jump in and introduce yourselves.
Jacqueline Rosenberg: Who’s jumping first? Should I jump first? Hi. Thanks, Oana. Really good to be here. Hi Zhanel. Lovely to see you. As Oana said, my name is Jacqueline Rosenberg. I also go by Jacq, Jacqs. I am living in Basel in Switzerland. I’ve been in Basel for coming up to 20 years now. I am an organization development practitioner. I’ve worked for a number of years in the private sector, the nonprofit sector, and the public sector, and for about the last 15 years now focusing in the pharma industry.
Zhanel Ahearne: Hi Jacq and hi Oana. I’m so happy to be here with you ladies because I really love and I really enjoyed the first podcast, so I was so excited when we decided to go ahead together. My name is Zhanel. I’m originally from Kazakhstan. I moved to the UK more than 15 years ago. In my professional life, I always worked in the oil and gas industry and across all other different industries as well. I am OD practitioner focused mainly on organization development, focused on culture change and transformation, and on leadership development. And I do a little bit of consulting and advisory to the companies as well. So I’m quite happy to be here and talk about change or talk about what we can talk about and what’s emerged.
Oana Amaria: Wonderful. Thank you so much. One of the things that I was thinking about with this podcast is kind of like a behind the scenes on what change is like. The reason I say this is because a lot of the work we do at Firefly is of course like process work, transformation work, but it’s not change. I think people often kind of confuse what that means and what that looks like. We do a lot of culture work as well, Zhanel. And so I wanted to start with my first question around when people talk about leading change, what do you think they often misunderstand? And whoever wants to jump in on that one.
Zhanel Ahearne: I’ll jump in first. One of the things I actually changed about talking about change is I stopped talking about leading change or driving change. I still remember the conversation I had before. I used to say, “I’m driving change across complex organizations.” But one of the things I start saying more and start realizing actually, we don’t drive change. Change happens. What we need to help will help with transition, because change is more physical and transition is more emotional and more human. So what I’m working on now is to support an organization when they’re going through the change so I can help them to navigate this change in a better, more human way.
Jacqueline Rosenberg: I like that. Can I add onto that? I think something else that I hear a lot when people talk about leading change is about resistance and resistance being the enemy, resistance is something to avoid or to push through or to climb over. And resistance is data. Resistance is information. For me, when I’m working with leaders that are navigating change, and I also like what you said, Zhanel, about sort of not talking about driving change, but resistance is where the gold is. That’s where you can really understand and uncover what’s going to unlock a shift.
Oana Amaria: It’s so interesting. Obviously that’s like such a golden nugget even in facilitation, which is a lot of what we do is like every time there’s resistance to something, whether it’s content or process, it’s like, “Ooh, let’s spend time here. What’s going on?”
I love the immediate reframe because I think that’s super helpful. We’re not leading change, we’re not driving change. Change is happening whether you like it or not. So what do we do with it, is what I’m taking in my brain. I’m just curious, based on your experience, what actually makes change difficult in organizations? I think on the surface people think resistance or people think the political stuff or all the different cohorts that don’t get along all the surface level stuff. But what actually makes change difficult in organizations?
Jacqueline Rosenberg: I think very often we talk when leaders are thinking about planning for change or change consultants are getting involved in the change, it’s all about the burning platform and the risk of staying still versus changing and this kind of bright new future and this vision that we’re heading towards. I think what actually makes change difficult is when you don’t stop to acknowledge the loss. Even when the change is all about so called good things that are going to happen and this bright future and potential that’s going to be unlocked and people will have these new roles, even when it’s a so called positive change, if it’s really shifting something, then people are also going to potentially lose their status, lose their competence, lose the team that they sat with. They’re going to change their parking space, they’re going to change desk. And at the core of it also can be identity.
So I think that where you come up against resistance or difficulties in a change, there’s often at the core of that, for me, some kind of a loss.
Zhanel Ahearne: I think I really can build on that as well, is when we’re talking about change, at the end of the day we’re all human being. Change on the paper, it’s very, very easy to do. You can draw a lot of pictures, you can do fantastic PowerPoint presentations, which a lot of consultancies do to be fair as well, and you can just be brilliant on the paper. In real life we have so many complexities, we have so many different people. We have real human beings actually who are impacted by that. And as Jacq said, without acknowledging what are they losing or where they’re moving and giving them enough time, it’s always a challenge. And I think that’s why a lot of companies are thinking, “Okay, we announced a new structure, let’s say it works from tomorrow. Everybody just change your head and you want a new life.” It doesn’t work that way.
It definitely requires a lot more understanding from system level as well. What does it mean for me personally? What does it mean in my team? What does it mean how I work? If I translate it in the language of the business, does my role change? What happens with me if oh, what’s my team changing and all? What does it mean with how do I operate with different teams as of tomorrow? What does it mean across all organizations?
So if we don’t really think through all these lenses and through all these system levels, I think we have a danger to make this change a little bit on the surface and a little bit artificial.
Jacqueline Rosenberg: Yeah, I like what you said. I’d just like to add one thing, that humans and people are the core of organizations. And people themselves are complex systems, and they are inside a complicated if not a complex system. So the difficulty is when we stop seeing people and stop putting ourselves in the shoes of the people that need to do something differently.
Oana Amaria: That was worth the interruption for sure, because I think it’s so to your point around the decks and the flow plan and the comms playbook and all the things that get built, right? We run a summit every year called Next Level Leadership, and on the first days we talk about transformation and what transformation looks like. We do an activity around, can you map it in your life? It can start before you were born. So to your point, change is always happening. What’s the difference between change and transformation? One of the pieces that we use is this idea around there’s an upset. Something happens that is uncomfortable. Rarely does transformation begin comfortably in all of our lives.
I would love to really hear about a moment when you realize this change initiative you were working on was headed in the wrong direction, and what were those early signals? Because what I want to do for the folks listening to us and our audience to really start to see the signals, the flags, to be able to tap into your expertise and your years of experience of the micro moments when you’re like, “Rut-roh, what’s happening here?” So what were those early signals that the approach wasn’t going to work?
Jacqueline Rosenberg: Yeah. I can give an example, and maybe it’s not where like a big moment, but it’s like the little small moments. So you’ve got examples or instances, and Zhanel, I’m sure that you’ve experienced this too, when everything in the leadership meetings sounds great. Everything when middle managers or frontline employees are presenting, it sounds great. This is the from, this is the to. The big picture, the burning platform, we’ve done our stakeholder map. Everything’s ticking along and we’re pushing forward, we’re meeting our timelines and our milestones. And then at the same time there’s the small voices to the side. So there’s been a town hall and you’re in the corridor afterwards and you hear someone making a comment. You see eye rolling. You hear, “This will blow over. There’ll be something else coming on next time. Let’s just see how long this continues for.” You can hear it in also how organizations treat questions at town halls. Is it an open pigeonhole or mentee or whatever, which is it anonymous or is it not anonymous? What are the questions people vote up versus the ones that they leave alone?
So I think it’s like these small insights and moments, the more kind of qualitative [inaudible 00:13:30] emotive instances that are really worth listening to. They speak sometimes louder, or often speak louder than the PowerPoint presentations.
Oana Amaria: You just made me think of a story that I just want to share really quickly because I know, Zhanel, you’ll jump in. We were doing this large scale rollout of a program that we have. I’m trying to do this without giving too much away around who the client was, because if I say too much I’m going to be in trouble. But basically it was a very important topic in the context of inclusion. And there was a lot of investment, there was a plan, all the things you just mentioned, Jacq. We’re in these sessions and I hear one participant say, “Yeah, they used to say this about safety too, and what happened?” And I have chills because there’s a lot happening around that now, right?
So for me, it’s like the perfect example of what you just mentioned. We had the stakeholder map. We had buy-in from the top. We started at the top. We cascaded, we did all the things. And you have this throwaway comment that makes you stop in your tracks and think, “Hmm,” when you know it’s so core to their business and for someone to feel this way or think this way. So thank you, that’s a great signal.
Zhanel, what example do you have?
Zhanel Ahearne: I think just on top of what Jacq was saying is as practitioners, we learn to listen to the silence and learn to listen what’s going on and what is said, and a lot of times what is not said as well. So our job is to pay attention to little details. A good example of what you are saying is if there are people who there will be a lot of skeptics and it is part of the job, right? We know that. And a lot of times you think about, “Okay, how do I get my skeptics on board so I move the needle little by little? How do I get them on board to make sure we have a conversation with them, we have a focus group, or we have a Q&A or we have something else?” So they become part of the solution as well rather than they become part of the barrier.
But also, it has to be genuine. I think a lot of times when the leadership is saying on the paper or saying on a webcast, “Yeah, let’s do that,” but then in the corridor between each other, they don’t really demonstrate. The change happens between the lines. Change doesn’t happen on the paper. Change doesn’t happen on a webcast. Change happens based on the behaviors. Change happens where people throw some comments, or leadership in particular. That’s why I think if the leadership is not on board, it doesn’t matter how brilliant you are as a practitioner, you will not be able to deliver that or support the organization. Because if the leadership is not on board, you can’t do it alone.
I also believe truly that it’s not my job to make this change. My job is to help to navigate the organization to go through this change, but I can’t take responsibility if they’re not committed or they don’t want to do it or they don’t pay enough attention or they don’t pay enough efforts or beliefs and they don’t put enough of themselves in this as well. I struggle to work with leaders like that personally because you will never be successful if they’re not with you. Because you cannot… I had these mistakes a lot, to be fair, and I think I had a lot of lessons learned out of it. So now I try not to work if the leadership is not on board.
Jacqueline Rosenberg: Yeah. I know you hear a lot in leadership or planning meetings when someone’s talking about something and then somebody will say, “Well, that’s a change management issue. That’s for change management. That’s a comms thing.” And very often it’s like, “No, that’s a leadership issue.”
Oana Amaria: Gosh, we heard that on every topic. In DEI it’s always like, “Oh, that’s HR’s issue, or that’s DEI’s issue.” It’s like, “No, there’s no version of this that is separate from you as a leader and how that works.”
Zhanel Ahearne: I can give you an example of how it landed well when leadership is on board. I was working with a client who was changing the organization’s target operating model, which links with the change of the structure as well. One of the things we embedded working with the leadership is, yes, there was like a top level announcement about the operating model change. But what we also did, the team, and starting with CEO, then the CEO operating office, it was a PNC representative, we sit with every function for like for an hour or two and discuss what does it really mean for them in a very small environment where they’re very open, and the CEO was openly taking any questions. We were collecting all the questions across all different functions. Then, we can share it back to the whole organization.
When I talked about transition, this is one of the things we definitely embedded is six months of transition. That’s what we said, like what has been said to the team by the leaders saying, “This is not black and white. It doesn’t mean it’s done and that’s it. No, if you find something is not working, if you think something is not right, let us know, let us do it together.” So we have these six months to move from where we were to where we want to go.
Of course, as a change practitioner, we do quite a lot of work on the background supporting leader to say the right things. We give them the key messages, we give them the packs, we do the pre-read, we do all of that of course, which is a part of the work you do. But when the change is happening, the leader is up front in it. It’s not me who’s up front in it, it’s not PNC who’s up front in it, but it’s leaders fronting it and they’re setting the tone. I think this is really fundamental, important.
Oana Amaria: I love the idea of not over functioning for the system. When you were saying that, it reminded me, I have a very recent example of it’s rare that we don’t have leadership buy-in, but I very painfully learned recently with an organization what it looks like when leadership are. And I did all the right things. I did discovery, I did the stakeholder, all the things. And it’s like you realize, in between the lines, as you said, that they’re not in. You can show up with all the right stuff, but your competence may actually be interpreted as arrogance if they’re not trying to do it. So it was fascinating to kind of have that. That’s never happened to me in my life. So I was like, “Huh, what is going on here?” And of course we’re trained to use of self. And there’s just no version of life that would be like what self showed up in these interactions. And I was like, “That is back to what was unsaid and what was understood, and like, where did that come from? Where did you get?”
I think sometimes the way we get there, if I had a hypothesis, is we have a lot of different frameworks and terminology and ideas that are strange and foreign to a lot of people, except for the LinkedIn warriors that are constantly educating all of us on a new framework or what. And I’m one of those warriors, by the way, so I’m not like insulting anyone by any means. But there are a lot of models out there. And we use models for all types. We’re trying to help meaning making, we’re trying to baseline, we’re trying to ground. We use it for all different reasons.
Is there an approach or a framework that you actually found useful, like genuinely useful in practice? And I hate compound questions, but this is important. And then the flip side of that, have you found, because people will say, “Oh.” They’re testing your competence or they’re testing your background like, “Oh, what are we going to do?” And people will do that to us all the time, especially in the context of learning and development. It’s like, “Oh, fear you.” And so it’s fascinating to see how people react to some of the grounding efforts that we attempt in organizations.
To recap, what are the frameworks that are genuinely useful in practice? And then, what are the frameworks that really get in the way and you’re like, “Let’s stop. Let’s stop using this or talking about this”?
Zhanel Ahearne: I can’t remember who said it, is it Kurt Lewinjak said, “All frame model theories are wrong, but some are useful.” So it just really came to my mind is there are a lot of models; change is not a model. For me, I call change a dance. I was thinking about it. I probably will not work with an organization who just said, “We need you to follow the pro style model, or you need you to follow these steps, and only agile or only waterfall.” I don’t do that. I do agile kind of I call it because it’s never straightforward.
And as we said earlier, it’s all about listening, understanding what’s said, what is not said, what are we sensing, what is our hypothesis? Do we need to pivot here? Do we need to stop here? Do we need too fast? Do we need to slow down? Is it okay? So you’re constantly thinking about that. So you’re dancing. You’re dancing, understanding, sensing the system, listening what’s going on, and you change to understand, meeting the context where the context is as well.
So if I have to use couple of models which I really probably like, I really like the transition model of William Bridges. The model is about transition, and then I think what Jacq said before, it’s about letting it go at the middle stage and the future stage, which is more the transition and more emotional and more psychological, where change is really physical. I really like this concept just to explain actually to help people to understand.
Another one, I really like the ideas about resistance, not only Gestalt resistance when we talk about seven different types of resistance, but there is also something, the resistance model where, okay, what is not really clear, what people don’t understand? I need to remember Rick Mayer, I think name, is of the guy, and he talks about there are three things. Something people don’t understand and something they think, “Why do I really need to know it?” Or, “I don’t understand it.” And the third one, “I really don’t understand or trust you, or trust the system or trust what has been done before.” So it gives you some messages and the data how to deal with it.
Jacqueline Rosenberg:I think for me, yeah, I definitely would agree with Zhanel that there are many, many models and frameworks out there, and it’s not just a lift and shift one size fits all kind of approach. I sort of see them more as, all of these models, all of these frameworks, it’s a set of ingredients out on your kitchen counter, and then it depends on what meal you’re looking to cook. Is it breakfast, lunch, dinner, a snack? Where is it in the world that you’re cooking? Who’s going to be eating this? Is it a four-year-old or is it your grandmother? Is it a celebratory meal or is it a family dinner? Or is it you’ve been out late and you come home and you want something quick to eat? And then you’re going to pull what is useful for that particular, what ingredients do you need to suit the need? So it needs to be flexible.
I think the models have different elements that are useful. I tend to see some of the Prosci ADKAR, whatever. It’s maybe a bit reductive to say this, but they see change as linear and predictable and manageable, and that you can just push everything into place and it will be quite… It’s cause and effect. And of course there is always cause and effect, but it might not be the effect that you think that you’re going to get.
So at every single step, whatever model or framework you’re going to use, you need to pause and see what happened, and then adjust your next step. So it’s a series of first steps every single time. I think experienced practitioners are probably not going to be using models as a crutch. They’re going to use it as a lens and use it to help structure their thoughts maybe. And then they’re going to put them to one side and then look at the system in front of them and co-create with people from that system what is going to work well here as a first step, and then we take it from there.
Zhanel Ahearne: This metaphor about cooking, that’s really beautiful what Jacq said.
Jacqueline Rosenberg: Thank you. And I like to cook, which is lucky, so I’m in the right line of business then.
Oana Amaria: What I was going to say is the way that you describe that, Jacq, it actually requires you to be quite creative and open as an OD practitioner. And I think that’s something that maybe people don’t realize. When they think of creatives, they think of people in like media or film or art and not actually how nimble and how adaptive you need to be in this process.
I actually think that that’s probably a good reminder when we think about how we interact with leaders. They are going through so much change right now, so much uncertainty. And I’m wondering if we took this conversation from like the org and how we move change through the org, what happens… And this could be like a story or it could be a leader that you’ve encountered, but what kind of advice have you given to leaders to help them stay grounded? You talked about grief at the start of this, like we should have the space to grieve what was. I think about how the whole world is talking about AI. It’s talking about the war that’s happening right now. It’s talking about the economy. There’s just so much instability and chaos and change. What are the things that help you and maybe help leaders stay grounded in these moments?
We know all the data behind it. We know the data around the world and what they think about trust and who they trust. We know all the ways that that shows up. But what’s some of the advice that you’ve given to leaders? What works for you?
Jacqueline Rosenberg: Think about the people. Put people at the center. Whether you’re the leader, you’re the change practitioner, you’re the manager, you’re the colleague, put people at the center of what you’re doing. Take the time to step into the shoes of the people whose day-to-day lives are going to somehow change. See life through their lens and feel what it’s like to walk around in their shoes and let that guide and inform and ground you in the decisions that you make.
Zhanel Ahearne: For me, I think as well is one of the things is also for any leader these days it’s becoming more and more challenging, and the change is not like before we were talking about, “Oh, the leaders need to build their change skills.” This day, I think it’s more about dealing with the complexity and polarities, because it doesn’t have to be one on another. And how do you really drive the agenda of your organization, but at the same time you have to meet the needs of the people, you need to meet the need of the external world, and you need to navigate this. So it doesn’t have to be one or another. How do you marry these two actually? How do you live within polarities and understand that?
And the complexity, how do you really live within complexity which exists? And we know we’re already told that everybody’s different. Some people are more logical, some people are more emotional, some people are more creative. But it doesn’t mean it’s right or wrong. It just means we absorb and we process information differently as well and we think differently a little bit as well. So how do we help people to understand we are all okay and we are all different, but also give us permission to accept that, but also deal with the polarities?
One of the things I definitely say is for leaders is to be kind to themselves because they have so much pressure in terms of delivery, like you have to be successful, you have to deliver, you have to, and those have to’s sometimes becoming not as kind.
Jacqueline Rosenberg: For the leader who’s steering or captaining the boat, to hold a steady course, regardless of the conditions. Keep the rudder still. Know where the leader is heading. And acknowledge what they don’t know. Acknowledge the ambiguity, be transparent, and have humility around that. And listen. Listen into the organization. Listen to different voices, not just the same voices. There’s a lot to be learned there.
Oana Amaria: It’s interesting because people are okay with you not knowing the answer. They just want you to acknowledge that this thing that they’re feeling and seeing and experiencing is real and that you’re clocking it, you’re tracking like what’s happening in the org. So even if you go to meetings that nobody else is read in on and so you can’t tell them what happened at that meeting, you can say, “Yes, we were there.” Some high level things that you can share with them. But I think this transparency piece is so hard, and oftentimes what I’ve noticed is that people will just cut off all information or communication about a thing. It becomes very compartmentalized, and I think that’s part of the instability people feel in organizations that make it really hard.
One of the things that we love to do as part of these conversations, and it’s just been so… I don’t know why I’m surprised at how human centered and beautiful this conversation was. I think it’s because sometimes it can be very academic. I love that we are centering the individuals that are impacted by these experiences as part of this conversation and just part of how we should think about change. I would love to center you both at the end of this episode and just ask, what’s something that you’re currently exploring or working on that is really exciting for you that we could highlight? Tell me how to plug you. Is there a book? Is there a website? Is there a new podcast that I can share? I’d love to share it with our listeners.
Jacqueline Rosenberg: Zhanel? So you’re interested in a piece of work that we’re doing or something that we’re reading or anything?
Oana Amaria: Whatever’s exciting. It could be a marathon you’re going on.
Jacqueline Rosenberg: It’s not that.
Oana Amaria: Whatever you’re really excited about. What’s something that you’re like, “This gives me energy”?
Jacqueline Rosenberg: Okay. I’ll tell you something that I’m excited about, a piece of work that I’m doing with a client right now on behaviors, sort of organizational and employee behaviors. We’ve just done a series of focus groups across the organization, and now I am experimenting with AI in the interpretation and the analysis of the data. I’ve done this old school many years ago for my own research transcribing with a dictaphone by hand 50 depth interviews, and fast-forward now to the platform that we’re using transcribing automatically, and then how to kickstart the analysis. I know it’s a bit nerdy, but I’m really excited about the possibilities of what you can do very quickly. And we’re doing this across three languages as well using original language transcripts.
Once we’ve done that, I’m going to be really excited to look at how we as the facilitators of the focus groups, we are the research instruments, not Copilot, so what then is the differentiation between us and our interpretation and our thought process and what comes out of the analysis tool. So that’s what I’m excited about right now.
What about you, Zhanel?
Zhanel Ahearne: It sounds very exciting. Now I want to be doing what you are doing as well.
There are a few things going on actually, to be honest. So there are a few things on my… I’m reading the books, which I quite like. I’m reading the book about Gestalt, which is quite enjoying. I’m listening podcasts. I really like the [inaudible 00:37:50] Podcast. I don’t know if you are following that. They’re very, very cool. They always invite some interesting guests. I really love them. I’m preparing for my paddleboarding event which is… It’s not marathon, thanks God, but it’s something which I would want to do as well. So it’s kind of like a lot of things at the same time. I’m building my website as well, because I’ve started my company a couple of years ago and now I’m building this new website trying to create something interesting. And I have a tendency to read five books at the same time, so I probably read five of them. You too?
Oana Amaria: It helps me switch my brain, because I like sci-fi and I can only do so much work reading and politics. I’m all over the place.
Before we close, I just wanted to ask, and these are standard questions we ask in every episode, what is your one request you have? It could be for leaders or inclusion practitioners or OD practitioners, navigating transformation or navigating change. What is the one thing like, if you don’t listen to anything else, here’s my tip for you?
Zhanel Ahearne: There’s something that comes to my mind quite is I always think about the intention versus impact. Because a lot of times as leaders or as practitioners, we all have a… I don’t believe anybody comes to work or do something to do the bed job or to ruin everything or to be really horrible to others. But we do quite a lot of things which is intentionally. We probably have a very positive intention, but we’re not always conscious about the impact we’re having. And impact can be really different. It’s the same like parents bringing up two children, and they’re completely different children. They completely absorb information differently. They understand differently. For any practitioner or for leaders, my probably advice will be always think about the impact you’re having. And it’s not only about intention, but also, what shadow are you casting?
Jacqueline Rosenberg: For me, mine is probably going to be similar to that, which is for leaders to acknowledge not only the bright possibilities that change will bring, but acknowledge what change is costing people. Keep people at the center of the change, not just the systems and the processes and the technology. And with that, it really pays dividends to slow down to speed up. And if considering and putting people at the center means that you slow down, then rest assured that will enable you to speed up afterwards.
Oana Amaria: Gosh, we have so many quotes. I’m writing them all down. There’s going to be a lot of clips of all your wisdom being sprayed across the internet. Thank you so much for this incredible conversation and for joining us. Part of me wants to do now a full series on just change. But I just wanted to say thank you for joining us. Thank you for being a part of our Stories from the Field. We’ll see you soon.
Zhanel Ahearne: Thank you. Thanks a lot for inviting us.
Jacqueline Rosenberg: Thank you. This has really been a lot of fun.
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