Fill In The Blanks: A Change Practitioner's Story
Every project has the same story. Different names, different numbers, same sponsor who never shows up. Fill in the blanks. Read it back. Feel seen.
Dan Olson
Change leader, coach, and writer. Former Inc. 500/5000 founder. I help practitioners make change practical, human, and sustainable.
Make and Mend: What Every Practitioner Keeps Skipping
Most practitioners have eliminated the one thing that keeps them sharp, resilient, and effective — unstructured time to learn, think, and connect. You're not lazy. You're running on fix-on-fail maintenance. And it's costing you more than you realize.
Reciprocal Apprenticeship
You can be deeply experienced and still out of date. You can be highly respected and still have something essential to learn from someone who hasn't yet earned their first performance review. That's not a threat to your credibility. It's how you keep it.
The Organizational Debt Collector
AI didn't create your organization's knowledge problem. It just sent the bill. The practitioners best equipped to fix it have been doing this work for years — without naming it, and without charging for it at the level it deserves.
Friction Was the Business Model
When intelligence can be applied continuously and at scale, complexity stops functioning as a barrier. Organizations built to absorb that barrier may discover their role was more temporary than it appeared.
The Coming Intelligence Oligopoly
Most leaders still think of AI as a tool. In reality, it is becoming a form of scalable cognition embedded directly into the enterprise. The firms that reorganize around this shift will not just operate more efficiently. They will operate under fundamentally different competitive conditions.
Action Absorbs Anxiety
When the world feels unstable, the weight people carry does not stay outside the workplace. Anxiety grows where influence feels lost. Deliberate action restores agency, protects our capacity to function, and helps practitioners stabilize the systems around them.
Not Business as Usual
A short note on proportion, attention, and stepping back during a civic moment.
2026 AI Trends Every Business Leader Should Be Ready For
AI is moving from experimentation to everyday business reality. In 2026, the biggest gains will come not from better models, but from organizations that rethink workflows, roles, and how decisions actually happen.
When Everyone Owns Change, Failure Has No Owner
In modern change management, "shared ownership" often results in orphaned outcomes. This article breaks down why collective responsibility is a structural trap and how to restore true accountability to your projects.
The Myth of AI-Driven Job Loss
AI is not removing the work. It is removing the roles and offering a story that makes those decisions easier to explain. When the work remains but no one can name who now carries it, organizations do not transform. They shift the weight, quietly, and call it progress.
From Observer to Contributor in Workshops
Being an observer in a workshop can feel like walking a tightrope. Speak too much and you disrupt the flow. Say nothing and your value disappears. This guide shows how to move from observer to contributor with intent, timing, and impact.
The USPS Changed a Small Rule. It Just Made Tax Filing Riskier.
A small USPS rule change quietly made mailing tax returns riskier. Postmarks may no longer reflect when you mailed your return, shifting the burden of proof to you. Here’s what independent practitioners need to know before deadlines hit.
How to Use AI Without Losing Your Edge
AI can speed up change work, but it can also quietly erode the thinking behind it. New research suggests overreliance on AI creates “cognitive debt,” weakening judgment, recall, and sensemaking if we’re not intentional about how we use it.
The End of Best Practices and the Rise of Situational Judgment
Best practices are breaking down. Not because they failed, but because the conditions they were built for no longer exist. What’s replacing them is situational judgment—the ability to decide, adapt, and act without a playbook.
Why Shared Services Break First in AI Transformations
Shared services are often the first place AI breaks—not because the tech fails, but because automation removes the human judgment holding complex systems together. When exceptions rise and authority stays centralized, shared services absorb the damage long before leaders see it.