Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
Thu, 10 Apr 2025
Richard Carson’s career didn’t unfold by design—it unfolded by curiosity. From planning cities to fixing broken systems, he’s never been afraid to say, “This isn’t working—let’s figure out why.” In Part 1, he shares how a job he hated, a grocery store run, and one very weird time-tracking system helped shape his unconventional path to becoming a change consultant.Key Highlights of Our Interview:From Archaeology to Urban Planning“I thought I wanted to dig things up. Turns out, I just liked solving puzzles.” How he traded bones for blueprints.What They Say Isn’t the Real Problem“The issue they give you is rarely the one they have.” Why client work is part consulting, part detective work.The Grocery Store Test“If you can’t explain your plan in the produce aisle, it’s too complicated.” What small-town planning taught him about communication.The Micromanagement Disaster“They were tracking tasks every 15 minutes. People were losing their minds.” The worst system he ever saw—and why it failed.Becoming a Consultant by Accident“I hired consultants. They impressed me. So I quit and joined them.” When one audit changed his career._______________________Connect with us:Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Richard H. Carson --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.12 Million+ All-Time Downloads.Reaching 80+ Countries Daily.Global Top 3% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>140,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<
Chapter 1: What is Richard H. Carson's unconventional career path?
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.
Chapter 2: How did Richard transition from archaeology to 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 liked, 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?
Chapter 3: What sparked Richard's interest in urban planning and community development?
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? Wow, 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 how I got into that was one of my last jobs as a manager, 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 and 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.
So that's kind of the evolution of how I started out digging in the dirt and not liking it and moving on to helping organizations with their problems. And basically, it always starts with a problem. When somebody comes to me and basically says, look, we have a problem, X, Y, Z, and we want you to help us fix it. Maybe it's because I'm compulsive about fixing things.
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Chapter 4: How does Richard identify and address organizational problems?
Maybe I shouldn't have been an engineer instead of a organizational change person. Whenever somebody comes to you and says, we have this problem we want you to help us with, chances are they're wrong. chances are that isn't the actual problem. The problem, it's a symptom of something else. And they really don't know what that something else is. They just know that, I'll give an example.
I just worked for a 70 government in Southern California. And they came to me and basically said, the city civilians and the business people, which are usually opposed, are all complaining about the same thing, about the performance of a particular agency. And while I looked into it, it was really interesting, but you know, what they thought was the problem wasn't really it.
Usually it's usually I end up giving them a series of recommendations about how to approach the different issues, the different problems that I found that are resulting in these symptoms.
Yeah, I agree with you on this. Totally.
Chapter 5: Why is employee involvement crucial in solving problems?
A lot of times what happens is, whether it's an elected board or a board of directors for a company, they will tell you what the problem is. They'll say, here's the problem we want you to fix. And my first reaction is, maybe. I'm not going to start from a position of... This is the problem. I'm going to fix it.
I'm going to start from the position of I'm going to talk to people internally and externally and ask them what they think. In other words, I will start with the front counter line staff who do the customer service. And I'll start at that level and say, what do you think works around here and what do you think doesn't?
And then take it to outside stakeholders, to managers, until I get a 360-degree look at what people are thinking about what works and what doesn't. And then I'll go back to the people who fired me and basically say, look, this is what I found out. Now, you can deal with it or not. If you want to deal with it, then I will give you some recommendations.
By the way, when I talk about recommendations, I use internal staff to develop And that's because I want buy-in from them. I'll give an example of something that I was thinking about the other day. It has to do with Trump and Musk and their Dodge or Department of Government Efficiency. This was done before by President Swain and Al Gore.
The way they did it was they went in and they basically engaged the staff to find solutions. And it was, while accounts were successful, or as Trump and Musk are basically coming in and threatening people, their jobs, and they're going to have a very hard time getting those people to be part of the solution. There's going to be a great deal of resistance.
to them from day one, not because they deserve it, but because of just people are afraid. Change scares people. And the first thing you have to do, at least what I do, is sit down with folks and say, look, if you do this, if you work on this, your life, your career, your work environment will be better, not worse.
Yeah, of course, everyone has their own idea of what getting better means. And in the office environment, it's not just about change. There's politics, power dynamics, and other things that aren't even part of the equation when we talk about improving or evolving. Some people resist change not because they don't understand it, but because change threatens the status quo.
And for them, that's uncomfortable.
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Chapter 6: How have change management models evolved over time?
The mantra usually to begin with is, but we've always done it this way. Why change it? We've done it this way for a decade.
Now, you've written a book called The Book of Change. You also hold a doctoral degree in organizational change. So I imagine you've studied a wide range of change models. Obviously, we don't have time to go through all of them here. You probably need a full course just to do that. But I'd love to get your quick take. From your perspective and your studies, how have these models evolved over time?
Has the way we think about change stayed more or less the same over the years? Or has it shifted drastically? Feel free to connect this with what you mentioned earlier. about employees being part of the solution? Or what happens when there is resistance, even in personal change? Has the approach to change itself changed?
Let's start with a quick note about centuries. I won't go back a lot on this, but 500 BC, a Greek philosopher said, nothing endures but change. And that's what the change is, the constant change. And it's hard for people to get their head around that, especially when you go in and try to work with them, because like I said, their attitude is, you've already done it this way.
I think the recent history of change management starts in 1947 with Kurt Lewin, who... created the first change management model. He did a lot of other things. He came up with the force field analysis, action research, but change management, he came up with a three phase model, which was freeze, moderate, and then refreeze.
Almost every model, including mine, almost every model since 1947 has followed that Those basic three phases, one way or another, sometimes it's five, sometimes it's seven, but they all basically say you go in and shake it up, you reform it, then you maintain it. And you may do that several times. So since 1947, Ross came up with the kind of stages of grief phase.
model, which was actually a change management model. Edward Deming came up with a more statistically based model, mainly for the Japanese. He couldn't sell it to the American auto industry here until the Japanese picked it up and made a success out of it. And then all of a sudden, the American automakers were interested in the Deming method. Carter Later came along with one.
ProSlide had the Yadcorp. They're basically all the same. So I came up with, I looked at maybe over 100 models. I came up with 22 from about, from Kurt Lewin to about 2016. I haven't found much since then. What I really looked at was trying to take it the next step.
So what I've done instead of, even though it was, it's very generalized three to five steps, I came up with the same three phases, a little bit different name, but they're basically the same. Then I took those into 10 steps and then I took those into 39 separate actions. Each action has a lot of detail about exactly what you can do to accomplish that particular action.
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