Harbinger Blog

He told me about pitching an idea to build a tower in Montréal. He had done the work, thought through the details, and was feeling good about it. Before he could get through the full picture, someone had already found the problem. Not a question, not a “have you considered,” just a problem. Then another. The idea never got a fair shot. It got torn apart before it could breathe.

Feedback is ingrained into everything we do. From a comment on a shared document to a performance review, we are constantly sending and receiving signals about how we’re doing and what we can improve on. Good feedback builds trust, accelerates growth, and makes teams better. Bad feedback, on the other hand, can erode confidence, create resentment, and quietly poison the culture it was meant to improve. The difference between the two is rarely about intention.

The go-to response to unhappy employees has become the well-being session: workshops, therapy check-ins, mindfulness programmes. The intention is good. But are we solving the right problem?

Leadership and management are not the same thing, and confusing the two is costing teams their performance, synergy, and potential. This is not textbook theory; it is the foundation of building teams that actually work. Understanding the distinction and knowing when to draw on each is what separates organizations that merely function from those that thrive.

Too often, change initiatives begin without a shared definition of success. Without that reference point, priorities drift, stakeholders lose confidence, and when the initiative wraps up, there’s no way to demonstrate it was worth the investment. Effective change management begins with the end in mind. A clearly defined outcome creates the foundation for meaningful measures and better decisions throughout the initiative.

Author: Krista Schaber-Chan If your Solution Integrator (SI) tells you they have training covered, ask a few simple questions: • How is training tailored to different roles? • How are trainers being prepared to teach, not just present? • What real business scenarios are included? • How does training align to how work is actually performed—not just system steps? • What happens after go-live to reinforce learning? • How will you measure

Most employees don’t resist change. They resist another change that will fail. After enough poorly executed initiatives, new systems that don’t work, training employees too late or not enough, leaders who disappear after launch; people stop believing change will improve anything.

Successful transformation isn’t just about managing projects—it’s about enabling people to change.

It's been hard to miss - the ongoing discourse and buzz about Artificial Intelligence: What can it do? What will it do? How will it impact our daily lives and work? With the introduction of online platforms such as ChatGPT revolutionizing how we work, there is understandably a mixture of both fear and excitement of how things will change in the coming future. In this blog, we will discuss the capabilities of 3 AI platforms (ChatGPT, Mural, and Microsoft Copilot), their limit

Competition is fierce; today, organizations are in a constant state of change in a race to survive. Drivers like globalization, industry disruption, supply pressures, and regulations are keeping executives on their toes to determine how to be sustainable. To remain competitive, one of the strategies includes organizational design – the creation of a system where people work together to reach common goals. This often results in an organizational restructure that reflects and s

Change Resistance is not a new concept. In preparing for this blog, I looked into when the term first came into existence. There’s an HBR article from 1969 that references a study from 1948 about Change Resistance. I found the study and article fascinating, knowing that we’re just building on something that’s been around since the 1940’s, and that not much has changed. Today, a staple of Change Management programs are specific plans or activities to capture and manage “Chang

If you’re thinking about all the changes happening in your organization, you may be wondering when it’s the right time to start managing change. What we’re essentially here to say is: don’t wait until it’s too late—start early. Don’t wait until the start of a project to begin introducing people to the change. Chances are, they’ve already caught wind of it, and have plenty of questions and worries about what’s to come. To prevent confusion and to get a head start, you want to

As change experts, we talk a great deal about new trends and strategies to implement in your next Change Management initiative. Whether it be shifting to a four-day workweek, going hybrid, or experiencing periods of intense growth, there is one common denominator that never changes: people. We stress communication and empathy when undergoing change because we know that people remain the deciding factor on whether your project will fail or succeed. That’s why today, we’re taki

UX is all about change, and it’s quickly changing the world as we know it Over the past 30 years, the term ‘User Experience’ (UX) has risen from obscurity and established itself as a driving force behind virtually all our modern products and services. UX design concepts have reached beyond digital interfaces and permeated the meeting rooms of diverse industries. It’s not a small thing; it’s a reflection of a greater trend in our economy and the population as a whole: people a

With everything we’ve experienced since the start of the covid-19 pandemic, we’ve grown accustomed to the rapid and sudden interruptions of our daily lives. But just because we’ve gotten used to the constant change, doesn’t mean it hasn’t adversely affected us. Change fatigue, the mental strain experienced after undergoing significant or extended periods of change, is a very real phenomenon. Change fatigue can present itself through physical and/or mental burden, and a lower

Change Management is a commonly used term, but today, the term Change Enablement has become much more widely known. But where did this “new” term come from? And what differentiates the two? Are they the same? The simple answer is no, they are not the same. Change Management and Change Enablement both have the same end goal of helping organizations navigate through change, but their core focus is vastly different. Firstly, it’s important to acknowledge that Change Enablement e

In the last few years, DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives have evolved far past the concept of diversity hires. Organizations are growing more self-aware about the kind of workplace cultures they foster, and the way employees are inadvertently affected by implicit bias. Long histories of workplace discrimination just can’t be erased through a single anti-oppression seminar. Why is DEI more relevant now than ever? The New World of Work, largely influenced by th

Published in 1989, Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People remains a greatly valued model for business success. Although the book was written more than thirty years ago, its concepts are meant to be applicable in all types of circumstances. Times have changed and the New World of Work we live in today has added new meaning to Covey’s list of habits. What more can we say about the list now? Today, we will elaborate on Covey’s seven habits in the context of the N

Adapt or Get Left Behind: Relearning in the New World of Work (NWOW) In our so-called “New World of Work,” where rapid change is inevitable, adapting to every new reality has become the essential survival tactic. The value of change leaders has shifted from their ability to learn, to their ability to learn and unlearn constantly. In this sense, we at Harbinger believe learning to be a constant journey rather than a single sit-down lesson. To spot the difference between traini

As 2021 has come to a close, I am looking forward to the change that a new year will yield. While nobody could have predicted what the last few years have brought us, I am interested in the many ways these unimaginable changes are going to shape the future of business, human connection, and technology. My top 3 predictions for 2022 revolve around employees and the ownership that employees are taking for the workplace they want to see for themselves - and how companies are fol