#338 Jennifer Selby Long: Personal Change First, Tech Change Second
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What is the focus of this episode?
Hi, everyone. Welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chan, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist community for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. Today, I'm sitting down with Jennifer Selby Long, who has spent the last 30 years helping tech leaders navigate the waves of tech evolution, leading and managing organizational change. In recent years, her focus has been on cybersecurity, digital transformation, and user experience. But don't tune out just yet. If you are not in those views, What Jennifer shares is relevant to anyone looking to thrive in today's fast changing world. Give me 30 seconds and I guarantee you'll find something valuable in this conversation. This episode and the next is all about how to guide yourself through personal transformation and step into your next opportunity.
A leader cannot successfully drive organizational change without first mastering their own personal transformation. So we'll dive into why understanding the natural process of personal change can help you fast-track your transformation. how to manage self-doubt, avoid sabotaging your own progress, and how to make career moves that truly work in your favor instead of simply running away from one undesirable situation to the next. Let's get started. Jennifer, tell us a bit about yourself. I know you've been in coaching for a long time. You specialize in coaching tech leaders manage and navigate change. Can you tell us more about that?
How did Jennifer Selby Long become a change manager?
I always say my practice and the focus of this coaching practice was not something that I determined. It found me. And by that, I became an accidental change manager in the early nineties when I was just Jennifer from the IT training department. And I would get contacted because someone would want some technical training. And the very first project that I did at this company. I was so excited because they said they're not adopting storing their work on the servers and they need some training. So I showed up ready with my pencil sharpened and I was waiting to hear the process and the manager driving that project listed the first three steps, which I wrote down and then he stopped. because that was the whole process. Vincent was three steps long.
Anyone with an engineering degree can execute a three-step process. And training really only helps you with learning how to do things that you can't do. And so with that, my colleague and I began digging into why on earth are they not executing this simple three-step process? And that was really the first change management type of project that found me. Now, over the years, as I shifted back into my primary interest, which is really around people and organizations and the development of those, I kept finding that the change-related challenges kept finding me. And they were exhausting and I didn't want to do them because I didn't like conflict and change always involves some conflict. And I wanted to get on a trajectory of doing something very stable and steady. And yet the things that came my way were all challenging changes where people were mad at each other, where people were feeling blue, where millions of dollars were sitting on the sidelines because large systems had not been implemented properly and were not really being adopted. And so it just kept coming at me.
And somewhere along the line, I came to recognize I've now been coaching leaders on change for so long that it's actually my specialty. And so the whole firm aligned around that. And that is really where we have our attention now. We always say our motto is we help leaders win at change. And today it's not really so much about the management of change, which I believe has come a very long way since I sat down with that technology leader and his three-step process that no one would adopt. It's come a long way, but the piece that is still a huge gap and a struggle for so many leaders is the leadership aspect of that change. How on earth do you get people to come along?
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the focus of this episode?
0:12–3:03
2
How did Jennifer Selby Long become a change manager?
3:03–6:20
3
What are the challenges of managing change in organizations?
6:20–8:44
4
What is the role of emotional intelligence in change leadership?
8:44
5
How does personal change influence organizational change?
8:32–14:41
6
What key skills are required for effective leadership in tech?
14:41–15:58
7
What personal experiences shaped Jennifer's coaching style?
15:58–27:52
Speakers
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