Why I write

There is an odd feeling that comes with hearing your own words come out of someone else's mouth.

I've had the opportunity to write for seven CEOs. Serious words. Smart catchphrases. Language intended to inspire and persuade people through some of the most significant changes of their careers. For a long time, that was my lane: working behind the scenes to help leaders find the right language for hard moments.

I was good at it. But there came a point where I realized I had something to say directly. Not through someone else's voice, but my own.

That's why I write.

The thing nobody talks about

After 30 years of leading organizational change inside large companies and alongside enterprise clients, the observation that stays with me most isn't about strategy or methodology. It's about loneliness.

I have tremendous empathy for my clients who are facing some of the toughest moments in their careers. High stakes and high pressure. Once-in-a-career moments, often.

Heading into a transformational change is an isolating experience. Leaders and project teams face enormous pressure to deliver on time and on budget, with every action and decision under scrutiny. These are make-or-break moments and yet there is often no one nearby who has been through anything like it before. No one to turn to who can say: this is normal, here is what it means, here is what comes next.

"It's OK. What you're feeling is totally expected."

High stakes, high pressure, high visibility...and no map.

That's the gap I write to close.

What I've learned and why it matters

My background is unusual for someone in organizational change. I came up through corporate communications and brand marketing before moving into product development and digital experience design. I've led organizational change on more than a dozen transformational technology programs, including four national digital health product launches.

Those experiences are where the changecapable method came from: a behavioral science approach to organizational change that I developed because the standard playbooks weren't delivering the behavior change adoption results that mattered.

What behavioral science makes clear —and what I've seen confirmed across every major transformation I've led or supported — is that people don't resist change because they're difficult. They resist it because the conditions for change weren't built around how people actually behave. Organizations (and leaders) don't make change the easy choice.

That insight changes everything about how you lead.

Who I write for

I write for the leaders who are carrying something heavy and doing it mostly alone. The program sponsor who has never led a transformation at this scale. The internal change leader who has been handed accountability for something more complex than anything in their career so far. The project manager who is holding the whole thing together and quietly wondering if they're getting the people side right. The business line leader who's been tasked with dramatically improving the performance of their team, quickly.

These are people who are IN IT. Not an abstraction to learn through attending a webinar or exec education. Something that they're living and breathing every day.

My book, Inspired by Fear: Becoming a Courageous Change Leader, and this blog are both written for these humans. Not with generic frameworks, but with the specific, hard-won knowledge that comes from having been in those rooms. The ones where the pressure was real, and the decisions had consequences.

The experiences have left me wiser and humbler. Sharing what I've learned from them is the point.

Update note, May 2026: This post was originally published in October 2022 as an introduction to the blog. It has been updated to more accurately reflect where the work has gone since then, including the development of the changecapable method and the launch of The changecapable Leadership Program.

If you're navigating a significant organizational change and want a structured foundation for building the leadership habits that help you demonstrate effective change leadership consistently, The changecapable Leadership Program is a cross-organizational cohort each fall that helps leaders learn while doing. Learn more.

Kris Jennings is an organizational change expert with 30 years of experience leading transformations for large organizations. She developed the changecapable method, a behavioral science approach to change that delivers higher adoption. She works with enterprise organizations navigating digital transformation, ERP implementations, and large-scale change.