#405 Richard Carson: Diagnosing Dysfunction, One Broken System at a Time — Part One
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Who is Richard Carson and why is he on the show?
Hi, everyone. Welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist humility for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. Today's guest is Richard Carson, consultant, strategist, and the guy who once walked away from a government job to join the consultants he just hired. In this two-part series, we talk about what happens when organizations try to change but forget about people Richard shares what most consultants get wrong, why empathy isn't optional, and how a terrible time tracking system inspired his now 39-step change model. It's practical, honest, and filled with stories you won't forget. Let's get started. Welcome, Richard. Welcome to Chief Change Officer.
Welcome to our show. You have this book called Book of Change. Naturally, this show is perfect for you. Before we start digging into your book and your learnings, tell us something about yourself, your journey leading up to the book.
What does Richard Carson's career journey look like?
I like to characterize my kind of philosophy as carpe diem or seize the day. And I say that because I have not, even though my background is in urban planning, I haven't planned my career and taking a particular trajectory, I basically seized on opportunities, career opportunities, as they presented themselves. So my career is, I started out wanting to be an archaeologist. But once I realized it was really about digging in dirt, I moved on from that into architecture. Architecture led me into urban planning. Urban planning eventually led me into what is called community development, which is an umbrella for engineering, plan review, urban planning, a variety of kind of disciplines under one umbrella, and eventually into consulting.
So every time something came along that I found interesting, I pursued it. And I've been very happy with that.
I like what you said earlier. How even though you were an urban planner, you didn't exactly plan your own career path. It wasn't all mapped out. You just evolved along the way. Something would happen and you would think, yeah, this feels right. So you would dive deeper and then something else would come up. maybe connected to what you already like, and you would follow that too. These days, people throw away the word perfect a lot. But your path wasn't perfect. It was real. It unfolded step by step. That got me curious. When you say something interested you, what actually sparked that interest? Was it just a gut feeling? Was it a hunger to learn something new? Or are you one of those people who's actually addicted to change?
Urban planning is part of it is that I've always been interested in community and organizations are basically a community of people. And so I've looked community at a scale and I'll give you an example. I was the regional planning director for the Portland Metro area of 1.5 million people. And in that job, we created plans for land use, solid waste management, wastewater, open space, a variety of really large plans. That is like a maximum scale of community. And for a while, I was an advisor to off and on to three governors of Oregon in both land use, environment, and economic development. So that's even a larger scale of community. But also the most enjoyment I ever had was I was the head, I guess, the planning director for a community of 25,000 people. And I really enjoyed that because I would walk into on a grocery store and somebody would stop me and say, can you get a stop sign on the corner of X and Y? Well, let me look into that. I can actually do something real.
Then later on, when I got into the consulting work, I started working with other organizations and really trying to solve their problems. And I, how I got into that was one of my last jobs as a manager, I was, I took on an organization that had a lot of problems. And so I hired a consultant to do what is called a performance audit, the GAO government standards for his performance audit. So they came in, did a performance audit, and I got really interested in that to the point where I left my job. I went into, I went to work for these people because I loved it so much. It was so interesting. And I went back and got my doctorate work in organizational psychology and eventually applied that to what I do now, which is organizational change management.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
Who is Richard Carson and why is he on the show?
0:13–2:15
2
What does Richard Carson's career journey look like?
2:15–17:06
3
How does Richard Carson define change management?
17:06–19:35
4
What common misconceptions do people have about change?
19:35–29:31
5
Why is empathy crucial in organizational change?
29:31–29:52
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Chief Change Officer™: Ensemble
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