Peter de Jager

Peter de Jager is a keynote speaker/writer/consultant on the issues relating to the Rational Assimilation of the Future. He has published hundreds of articles on topics ranging from Problem Solving, Creativity and Change to the impact of technology on areas such as privacy, security and business. His articles have appeared in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Futurist and Scientific American.

He is best known to project management audiences for his efforts to create responsible awareness of the Y2K issue – For which he received several awards from IT associations and Govt. Agencies.

In addition to presentations and seminars on the topics above, he has written dozens of regular columns. These include; Association Trends, CIPS across Canada, Enterprise, Globe & Mail online and Municipal World

He’s spoken in more than 40 countries and is recognized worldwide as an exciting, humorous, provocative and engaging speaker. His audiences have included the World Economic Forum, The World Bank and The Bank for International Settlements.

His presentations and workshops are highly interactive, fun, irreverent to mistaken ideas and most distinctively - provocative. He forces the audience, by demonstrating conflicts between their stated beliefs and behaviours, to think differently about what they thought they knew.

The presentation is highly interactive, thought provoking and guaranteed to generate good, deep, discussion about how Change is, and should be, implemented in an organization. It is also, unavoidably – fun.

What must we do to bring about a Change initiative as smoothly as possible? Communicate! Communicate! Communicate! How much, and for how long do we do this? Until we get sick and tired of the sound of our own voice – then we take a deep breath and a drink of water and we start all over again. Communication isn’t something that stops and starts; it’s a constant activity before, during and after any Change initiative.

This isn’t exactly news. We sort of get this. I can ask any audience in the world to tell me the ‘secret’ to good Change and they repeat back “Communicate, Communicate and Communicate some more!” as if it’s been forcefully injected into their cerebellum. The problem arises when the questioning becomes a bit more detailed, “What exactly should we communicate?”

The response to that question is usually either a blank stare or the reasonable recitation of the reporter’s standby; Who, What, Where, When, How and Why. Not a bad start. If we’re writing a news article, then these are good solid questions. The Change Management problem requires all of those, and a few others besides. It’s not that the reporter’s questions are a poor tool; it’s just that they don’t address the peculiar psychology of the Change challenge.

When faced with Change – here are the questions that demand answers: 

1. WHY? – Why is this particular Change necessary now?
2. WIIFM? (What’s in it for me) – If we don’t address this? They’ll listen to nothing else.
3. MONDAY? – What exactly will we be doing differently tomorrow?
4. WON’T? – What won’t Change?
5. MIGHT? – What might go wrong, and what are our plans to mitigate that?
6. WILL? – What will be difficult and what will we do to make that easier?
7. SIGNPOSTS? – How will we know we’re making progress? 

Will include a light supper