Chief Change Officer
#399 Nellie Wartoft: Global Fix—Change Management Without the Migraine — Part Two
Thu, 29 May 2025
Nellie Wartoft is the founder and CEO of Tiger Hall, a change enablement platform built for teams tired of stale workshops and change theater. In Part One, she takes us from her tiny hometown in Sweden to the boardrooms of Asia, where flipping burgers at McDonald’s, carrying an ice hockey trunk to Singapore, and watching companies struggle with real transformation all shaped her mission. This is change management with edge—equal parts adventure, insight, and rebellion.Key Highlights of Our InterviewChange Theater vs. Real Impact“Most companies don’t fail at change because of bad tools. They fail because they bring people in too late and communicate like robots. Change has to feel human to work.”Same Emotions, Different Timelines“Fear, chaos, resistance—these show up everywhere, regardless of geography. The real difference is how cultures structure leadership and how fast they move. The U.S. wants speed. Asia wants legacy. Both come with tradeoffs.”Ego: The Silent Killer of Transformation“The higher the ego of a leader, the lower the success rate of their transformation. Fear of feedback, obsession with control—it turns a team into a compliance machine instead of a change engine.”Tech Isn’t the Problem—Leadership Is“People love apps—just not the ones that feel forced. If your tools aren’t solving real problems or making life easier, the issue isn’t the platform. It’s the person who bought it.”Walking the Talk at Tiger Hall“We use our own platform to manage internal change. No Zoom fatigue, no death-by-Slack. One short recording can replace hours of town halls and still hit harder—because it’s fast, direct, and straight from the source.”_________________________Connect with us:Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Nellie Wartoft --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.EdTech Leadership Awards 2025 Finalist.18 Million+ All-Time Downloads.80+ Countries Reached Daily.Global Top 1.5% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>170,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<
Chapter 1: What sparked Nellie Wartoft to start her company?
But all it does is that it increases this change fatigue and resistance and fear in employees. And I was like, this is not necessary. And then employees also have good intentions. They really want to help. They want to support. They want to do a good job, right? No one shows up to work and thinks I'm going to do a really shit job today. Let me see how bad I can do this job.
People generally have good intentions. So it's good intentions on both sides, but it's the in-between that makes it get lost, right? And that's the complexity of the size of these companies, the communications and the lack of the availability of these tools. Like you can't target very well with email or SharePoint and it's hard to create high quality engaging content with these tools.
Like it's mostly just written documents. So I was looking around and I thought, what are people engaged with? They're really engaged with their TikToks and Instagrams and Spotify's and all of the consumer-grade technology and things that are social, things that have engaging content. It's like, why isn't change communications more like this?
Why can't we communicate change and transformation to employees the way an influencer communicates about the latest fashion trend or whatever to their followers, right? So that was a big inspiration for it as well. And just how do we bring that content consumption, engagement and social aspects into change and transformation?
Chapter 2: How do cultural differences affect reactions to change?
When it comes to change, a lot of it goes beyond technology. It's ultimately rooted in human behavior and cultural nuances. you've had the unique experience of living and working across Europe, Asia, and now the US, which brings with it an incredible range of perspectives.
Given your background and your exposure to diverse clients, I'm curious, how do you see cultural differences play out when it comes to people's reactions to change, Even the concept of change itself, whether it is a mindset shift or a full-scale transformation, can vary dramatically across regions.
Have you noticed any significant differences or similarities in how these cultures approach and perceive change? And how do you adapt your solutions to help clients tackle those cultural nuances more effectively?
I think there are a lot more similarities than differences actually. At the end of the day, we're all pretty similar as humans and the human psyche and human emotions doesn't, they don't differ that much across geographies from my experience and things like the fear, the chaos, the uncertainty, politics, emotions, all of these are in all of these cultures, right?
So the human experience of change and including change resistance and fatigue and all of those are very natural and very human regardless of where you're from. I think the differences that more than the cultural differences shows up in organizations more from A couple of ways, right?
So one is the role of talent and how it's viewed and the kind of like how you view talent as a resource versus an investment, for example. And that also influences the leadership culture. So if we take Asia where it's more generally more top-down work cultures, you don't really question your boss. You don't really speak up to authority.
There are other cultural nuances that drive other kinds of behaviors. Whereas in the US, it's very common to challenge authority and speak up against your manager and say what you think and voice your concerns. So that's leading to differences in communication.
And we also see that because we have clients across 32 countries work with around half a million employees worldwide that are using the platform. So across those differences in geography, you can see that leadership style and the hierarchical nature of organizations differ than in the two-way feedback loops, for example, and the kind of feedback that people share and how they share that.
And you also see it in things like trust in leaders. So in Asia, people are much more prone to trusting their leaders. I would say maybe not blind. Oh, but he's the boss, so he knows best. Yeah.
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Chapter 3: What are the common pitfalls of change initiatives?
realistic success rates up to 80, 85%. So it's not about having a hundred percent on board, but it's about how can you have more than just the ivory tower people involved and getting people involved very early. So that's one big difference I see. Then the other one would be how much effort they put into the with them.
So what's in it for me, the language and the words that they use with different audiences. Do you go to a factory floor, for example, with very formal headquarter corporate language that's usually not flying very well? Or do you actually meet people where they are?
So the amount of effort that they put in to target the different audiences, understanding their needs, using the words, the language that they use and like speaking their language, both literally and metaphorically, that's another big difference. I see like everything from vocabulary and words used. And then I think almost the biggest one is actually the ego and fear of the leaders.
Chapter 4: Why do most change transformations fail?
It's almost a direct correlation between the level of, or inverse correlation, I should say, with the ego of the CEO and the success of transformation. And the higher the ego of the CEO is, the lower the success of your transformation. I've seen this in multiple companies and heard about it as well from change leaders that I talk to every day.
And it's always the high ego, high fear type of leader that makes transformation very difficult. Because usually what that means, right? It's not the ego in itself that is a challenge, but the ego means that usually they are less open to feedback. They take things more personally. And any negative feedback or information, they take it very personally. They think it's all about them.
So high ego and high fear in leaders is usually a very bad combination because it stifles any and all conversation and feedback that you can have around it. And that is what creates these top down, do as I say, and if you say anything, I'm going to punish you or I get very scared or I take it personally.
And that kind of approach in leaders is just not beneficial at all for a transformation type of environment. So that might have worked in the old days where you needed a leader to just tell people what to do and then they go execute it. But in 2024 and beyond, it's not going to be that type of leadership that succeeds.
so that's another reason i see companies fail is when senior leaders have that high ego are very sensitive to feedback or don't even want to hear any feedback at all or not interested in what people think on the ground that's another big challenge so those are some differences that i've seen and both of these hold true both across asia and the us yeah like you said human nature is universal
Fear, ego, emotions, and office politics exist everywhere, regardless of culture, gender, or age. My friend's story about working in a big bank in Asia captures a common sentiment, that is, frustration about change management tools or processes that still imposed rather than embraced. She mentioned how the software forced employees to fit into his framework rather than adapting to their needs.
And the feedback process, she described it as a formality where no one feels safe or motivated to speak the truth, just filling in responses for the sake of it. That sense of disengagement is palpable. I'm curious, from your perspective, have you encountered similar resistance in your work?
How do you ensure that tools or processes don't just check the box for change but actually engage and empower the people they are meant to serve?
Yeah, I'm sure that happens in a lot of places. And that's not good. I think for us, it's very different because employees like it. And we actually started B2C. So we actually started as a consumer platform to ensure that engagement was high, people liked it, it was an experience that suited them, which I think many platforms don't do.
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Chapter 5: How can organizations improve their change success rate?
And that's where we have very high engagement levels, especially on the live streams with live customers. And then getting that direct feedback on onboarding, for example, when they do their onboarding journeys in Tiger Hall, having that direct feedback and ultimately just saves a lot of time.
In my previous startups as well, where obviously we didn't have TigerHall because it wasn't built, it became a lot of me repeating myself on a lot of Zoom calls and doing a lot of cranings and information and sharing sessions and typing long messages on Slack and producing documents and all over. That's what I don't have to do anymore.
So it's a big save of time where I can, and there is no whispering game where like I tell the leadership team, then the leadership team tells their direct reports and then they tell their direct reports and so on. This is just like straight from the horse's mouth.
So I can be coming out of a customer meeting, pick up my phone, record a short message to the team or whichever department or audience that I want to send it to. And it's just done and there right away. So it's much more faster for me as a leader and all my leadership team and everyone else who communicates internally and not having these like one hour town halls and long trainings and so on.
And that goes for onboarding and training as well. Like in my previous company, I used to do all the onboarding with everyone. And that took a very big part of my time, whereas now they do that on Tiger Hall and then we have a Q&A session and then they ask me any questions that they want to ask. So yeah, so anything in change, we definitely use Tiger Hall for it.
I call this walk the walk and talk the talk leadership. I would like to bring you back and talk more about change, but next time it will be on video. We're launching the YouTube channel very soon. So after the holidays, please come back, Nelly. Thank you very much for your time today.
Yeah, that sounds great. We'll be happy to.
Thank you so much for joining us today. If you like what you heard, Don't forget, subscribe to our show, leave us top-rated reviews, check out our website, and follow me on social media. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Until next time, take care.
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Chapter 7: How does leadership style influence change management?
And that kind of approach in leaders is just not beneficial at all for a transformation type of environment. So that might have worked in the old days where you needed a leader to just tell people what to do and then they go execute it. But in 2024 and beyond, it's not going to be that type of leadership that succeeds.
so that's another reason i see companies fail is when senior leaders have that high ego are very sensitive to feedback or don't even want to hear any feedback at all or not interested in what people think on the ground that's another big challenge so those are some differences that i've seen and both of these hold true both across asia and the us yeah like you said human nature is universal
Fear, ego, emotions, and office politics exist everywhere, regardless of culture, gender, or age. My friend's story about working in a big bank in Asia captures a common sentiment, that is, frustration about change management tools or processes that still imposed rather than embraced. She mentioned how the software forced employees to fit into his framework rather than adapting to their needs.
And the feedback process, she described it as a formality where no one feels safe or motivated to speak the truth, just filling in responses for the sake of it. That sense of disengagement is palpable. I'm curious, from your perspective, have you encountered similar resistance in your work?
How do you ensure that tools or processes don't just check the box for change but actually engage and empower the people they are meant to serve?
Yeah, I'm sure that happens in a lot of places. And that's not good. I think for us, it's very different because employees like it. And we actually started B2C. So we actually started as a consumer platform to ensure that engagement was high, people liked it, it was an experience that suited them, which I think many platforms don't do.
So that's, of course, one differentiator when it comes to how we've approached it. But then I think also it's Like people tend to, it's not helpful to have generalizations like a piece of software is bad. It's not about the software. It's not about the technology. It's not about the platforms. It's about what problem are you trying to solve and how are you solving it?
And that's actually on the leaders in the organization to decide that. So in your friend's case, I would challenge the CHRO and say, what problems are you trying to solve by bringing in all of these different software platforms? Like it's clearly not delivering the value or delivering the results that they had intended for it to do. So it's never about the platform.
It's about what does that platform, software, technology, whatever you're bringing in, what is that intended to solve? And that's up to the business leaders to decide. Because it's not about the amount of technology is never a problem, right? Think of our phones. Like how many apps do we have? I think the average is like 400 or 450 apps in your phone.
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