B1-AKT Sparked the change in Paris

Proud supporters of Spark the Change

The essential human skills of empathy or understanding a consumer, defining and calibrating a problem into a problem statement, solving it creatively and collaboratively for the user, and designing solutions that create impact are all skills of the future.

Also, the emergence of the new “sandwich generation” – people in their forties and fifties who are struggling to juggle work with caring for children and elderly parents – combined with smartphone technology, which blurs the boundaries of work and home, has placed people under additional pressure.

Organizations need to take better care of their people and recognize how the demands of work can affect their physical and mental health, as well as their ability to perform well at work. That means placing health and wellbeing at the heart of an organisation.

Change doesn’t just happen at work. It also happens to you in your personal life, in your family, in your community, in your leisure activities, and of course at work.

Anybody can be a change agent. You may already have been one. If, for example, you have ever acted as a subject matter expert for a project, you will have had some influence on the outcome and progress of change. A true change agent, however, is not just a supporter of change, but someone who can spark the change.

How do you do this without authority of being a senior leader or a change manager? Smart organisations are now recognizing that change initiatives are stronger and go on for longer if they are supported from the ground up.

These will typically have ways for anyone in the organisation to submit suggestions for change, and then invite them to be involved in working on it.

There are some transformations that don’t require an external spark, they self-ignite. Special thank you to Spark the Change team & Ben Sabry.