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Hi there ! Welcome to The Change Zone. I created The Change Zone website as a millennium project back in 2000. It has been a one man learning curve, including the webmastering, which is the reason why it has taken many years to develop. It may not be slick, but it's my own creation. I was motivated by the fact that there was not one site I could visit or recommend to busy professionals in organisations to get an overall view of change processes and the tools/techniques available to help them think differently in order to do things differently. Change comes from transcending received wisdom and transforming the way change is led and managed in organisations. I knew that if organisations were to transform their ways of working then people would need to understand the dynamics of change and shift their very 'way of being' (ontology) if increasing complexity and demands for sustainabilty were to become part of every leader's armoury. Change leaders are to found everywhere - both inside and outside the organisation as well as at the top and the bottom. As an Organisation Development Consultant I saw how leaders at the top and middle of organisations were limiting the talent and creativity of their teams and followers by creating a culture of compliance, targets and one dimensional solutions. Many competent people were stifling the human soul, building barriers to employee engagement and individual creativity, and increasing workplace stress with demands for higher productivity with no additional time or resources for learning. Despite some success, most of the Change Programmes I came across seldom worked (restructuring or re-engineering) because they did not engage people as human beings or foster relationships across functional or service boundaries. Sadly, these cultures are still alive and kicking in the public sector today, wasting talent and public money. There are also examples of good practice which we must learn from. It is often forgotten that issues to do with dynamic change and living systems have been studied by the natural and social sciences for the past half century. Today, many humanistic and innovative managers have lost patience with the single panacea as a cure for all their ills. They have come to see as counter–productive the either-or thinking between a hard–nosed, command and control top-down approach on the one hand, and the bottom-up teamworking and empowerment approach on the other. We ned both. Why cannot both coexist through a concern to develop human beings to their fullest potential? Does not everyone benefit if an enterprise maintains high standards and seizes its opportunities? I wanted to create a 'place' where people could find a diverse range of change tools and techniques to support transformational and transactional change processes, where they could see the relevance of ontological learning and change for themselves as coaches and change leaders and use as appropriate to their needs. After directing a nationally funded project helping local government services "Learn from Service Users", I was invited by the Cabinet Office to launch Learning Labs in the UK as a tool to introduce 'structural dynamics' into service improvement initiatives. The Local Government Management Board, a quasi-government organisation invited me to work on a publication exploring what leaders of change could learn from the New Complexity Sciences. This opened up 'a new way of seeing' for me, one that wa more holistic, dynamic and ontological. What's more, the approach worked with individuals, teams, organisations and communities. This new world view is being created by thinkers as activists such as . . .
I draw on the work of all these people and many more who are working to bring about meaningful change relevant to the challenges we now face in our lives, our organisations and the world at large. We need to adopt new 'ways of being' in the world. The Change Zone website is based on the simple premise that if you cannot see it, you will not do it. The first stage is awareness, the second is action and the third consolidation. In 2008 it became clear that their was a growing demand internationally from teachers, therapists, managers, corporate trainers, policymakers, coaches, institutional leaders and students of change processes that could only be met by providing more specialist information about ontological and dynamic change. I therefore decided to integrate the infobase that was The Change Zone with my work as a Change Coach with individuals and teams. As a result a new identity was born, with a new purpose. The goal now is to support the promotion of ontological learning and dynamic or integral change. If you can support me in making The Change Zone a vehicle for learning about change just get in touch, contribute an article, or just tell tell your friends. If it helps hard working people to transform their lives for the better, everyone gains - colleagues, employees, children, friends, strangers, not to mention the planet.
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Steve Trivett 
