Conversations: The Atomic Unit of Change | Daniel Stillman | Modern Change Management & Leading Change
Change Signal: Modern Change Management that WorksShow Notes
Here are three tensions that emerge from this Change Signal conversation with Daniel Stillman:
Who actually owns the change?
What conversations are you avoiding?
Are you inviting people — or forcing them?
If you lead change in a large organization, you already know this: great strategy and clear comms aren’t enough. Daniel Stillman — author of Good Talk — makes the case that conversations are the real engine of change, and most of us are underpowered.
We explore why one-to-many communication rarely shifts behavior, and why many-to-many conversations — messy, slower, harder — are where ownership and momentum actually build. Daniel brings a designer’s mindset to leadership, showing how conversations can be shaped with intention, not left to chance.
We also get practical. How do you test new ways of working without waiting for permission? What does “minimum viable change” look like inside a constrained system? And how do you build trust when people have seen these efforts fail before?
This is a conversation about change leadership that is grounded, slightly subversive, and immediately useful — especially if you’re trying to move something real, with people who don’t have to agree with you.
Change Signal. Where transformational change leaders seek and find modern change wisdom. Cut through the blather, the BS, and the noise to find the good stuff that works.
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Here are three questions this Change Signal conversation asks:
Here’s the revised version with an opening sentence and the three questions bulleted.