NAVIGATE BUSINESS CHANGE
WITH CONFIDENCE
Unlock the skills, mindset, and tools to drive lasting business change
You’ve got an amazing strategy. You’ve spent hours crafting your vision, your values, your strategic objectives. You’re excited about how it’s going to transform your organisation, not to mention your career. But there’s a problem. The gap between where you are today and your strategic vision of tomorrow.
You can see the potential, but the path to get there isn’t clear.
Maybe you’ve launched a few initiatives, but you’re not seeing the expected results. Projects are taking longer than planned, budgets are under pressure, or the outcomes have been underwhelming. There are so many moving parts, it’s easy to lose track if you don’t have a structured approach to business change.
STRATEGIC VISION ≠ OPERATIONAL REALITY
Do any of these sound familiar?
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Senior executives support your strategy in principle, but securing budget to pay for it is a lot more challenging
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There’s so much change happening in the rest of the organisation, you struggle to get people’s time and attention
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People are sceptical about change because previous initiatives have failed to deliver the promised outcomes
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You find yourself getting bogged down in arguments about who can approve changes to organisation structures, processes, and systems
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Your team struggle to prioritise project work over business as usual operations
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You don’t have standard project documentation or templates, every project wastes time creating their own from scratch
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You find yourself relying on external consultants to deliver change because your team lack experience or a robust framework to follow
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You have to co-ordinate change across multiple organisation structures, and it feels like there’s a lot of people with the power to say no, and very few who can say yes!
If you find yourself feeling frustrated and unable to make consistent progress towards your goal…
WE PROMISE THERE IS A BETTER WAY
The Change Academy is here to help you lead successful change and make your vision a reality.
There are three core components to make change happen in any organisation
Knowing
What to do
Knowing
How to do it
Having
Self-belief
It sounds simple, and in many ways, it really is
HOWEVER…
Organisations are complex, adaptive systems made up of people, processes and technology. Making one small change to this complex web can have far reaching, and unintended consequences.
Seemingly simple changes to a process, or an update to a single policy, can result in the organisation fighting back against the change.
Resistance to change is an entirely predictable, human reaction. Yet, it often comes as a surprise if you’re using a traditional project management approach to business change.
Leading organisational change takes a nuanced, iterative approach. You need to talk to people, understand their needs, and adapt as you go. All while finding ways to inspire confidence in others when dealing with your own uncertainty and doubt.
That’s why we created
the Change Academy…
Since 2006, we’ve been helping organisations transform their HR, Finance and Business Operations. From simple changes to back-office processes, to large scale business transformations that change the way organisations deliver value to their customers.
We’ve not only seen the most common issues, risks and challenges that change projects face. We’ve personally fallen into most of the potholes, pitfalls, and elephant traps out there. And climbed our way out again.
We’ve condensed almost 40 years of hard won experience into a project based leadership development programme, change toolkit, and online community to support you and your team as you deliver change.
Learn to lead business change with our tried and tested:
Knowing
What to do
Having
Self-belief
If you’re ready to stop complaining about the problems in your organisation and do something about them, join us now in the Change Academy.
Your first step is securing the executive support and budget you need to make your change a success. Learn how by registering for your free Initiate Business Change course.
Step 1 - INITIATE CHANGE
- Uncover the problems your organisation’s executives really care about
- Create a vision of the future that excites your team
- Map out the stakeholders who will influence your change
- Tell a compelling story about the need for change
- Lay out the expected costs and benefits in a preliminary business case
- Create a plan to scope out the change
- Define how decisions will be made, and who will make them
- Create an executive summary paper that clearly lays out the need for change, your planned approach, and the costs & benefits of making it happen
- Secure executive buy in and formal sign off using Gate Review meetings
- Avoid the common pitfalls and risks that stop change projects before they begin
Register now for my free INITIATE BUSINESS CHANGE course
Register Now
CHANGE
PRACTITIONER PROGRAMME
The Underscore Change Academy is a practical, hands-on leadership development programme that provides a step-by-step framework for successfully delivering business change.
It works best when you have a live change project to deliver. Because leading business change is something that you can only learn by doing. It’s not a spectator sport.
Learn to lead change in 5 simple steps…
One-to-one onboarding to ensure you're set up for success and familiar with the Change Academy platform, toolkit and resources
Apply what you learn directly to live business challenges for immediate, meaningful impact
Join the Change Community for peer-to-peer support, shared insights, and feedback from change experts
Develop your core skills to Diagnose Problems, Design Solutions, and Deliver Change through group mindset sessions
Support every step of the way through live expert led learning, including Masterclass deep dives and group Q&A sessions
Your practical guide to leading business change
Go through Video Sessions at your own pace, use the Change Toolkit to plan and manage your change, get help and guidance from the Change Community, and join Live Master Class Sessions to deep dive into specific topics and receive personalised advice from change experts.
What's included in the Change Academy?
- Project Based Learning self paced video learning applied directly to live challenges in your organisation by your team
- Proven Change Framework that has successfully guided over 65 business change projects
- Change Toolkit containing document templates, checklists, guides and examples for every step in the Change Framework
- Expert & Peer Support an online Change Community and live Masterclasses and weekly Q&A sessions
- Fast Feedback to short cut your team's learning through feedback on exercises and documents
- Group Coaching to develop a transformation mindset to diagnose problems, design solutions and deliver change
- Proactive Risk Management using proven tools to anticipate problems and take steps to avoid them before they occur
- Project Controls that keep projects on time and within budget, avoiding uncomfortable compromises to hit deadlines
- Market Insight & Expert Guidance that ensures you use consultants in the right place, at the right time
- Project Delivery Capability inside your organisation that grows your reputation for delivering on your commitments
CHANGE
PRACTITIONER PROGRAMME
Join the Waiting List
FAQs
How can I be sure the Change Academy will deliver value?
My leadership team is already overloaded. How can we fit this programme in?
How do I know the Change Academy will be relevant to our specific needs?
I don't know if there's room in my budget for the Change Academy, how is this better than the alternatives?
How long will it take to deliver change in my organisation?
Meet the team
Jason West
Programme Director, Instructor
Jason is the Co-Founder of Underscore Group and a Programme Director who has led multi-year, global transformation programmes in HR, Finance, Procurement and Business Operations.
Joe Ales
Programme Director, Instructor
Joe is the Co-Founder of Underscore Group and an award-winning, business transformation leader known for delivering sustainable change through the integration of people, process and technology.
Susan Howard
Technical Training Lead, Instructor
Susan heads up Training Services at Underscore. She has deep expertise in technical training covering data analytics, project and risk management, systems roll out, and office applications.
Susan Howard
Executive Coach, Instructor
Emma-Jane is an executive coach and leadership development specialist who works with both individuals and teams. She helps leaders develop a transformation mindset, equipping them with the ability to diagnose problems, design solutions, and confidently lead change.
Carla Scott
Course Operations
Carla provides the operational support that keeps the Change Academy running smoothly. You’ll likely meet her during onboarding and on live coaching calls.
Tom Vanhinsbergh
Digital Learning Guru
Tom is one of our creative geniuses, bringing graphic and instructional design to make the Change Academy educational and engaging.
Matt Gore
Videographer, Producer
Matt is our resident photographer, videographer and photo-journalist. He’s responsible for making Joe and Jason look vaguely presentable and articulate on camera. A feat to test the patience of a saint!
Who is this programme for?
Let’s be honest, leading business change is more obstacle course than stroll in the park. Unless an organisation is truly broken, changing it is inherently risky. But organisations that fail to change, fail to survive. Leading change is always challenging, occasionally terrifying, but never dull.
It’s not for everyone, and that’s OK.
You’re a good fit for this programme if:
- You’re a senior executive leading change and want to ensure you and your team have the tools, skills, and mindset to get it done
- You’re someone who is desperate to make change happen but you’re unsure where to start
- You’re joining a business change project for the first time and are looking for frameworks, tools, and templates that will get you up to speed fast
- You’ve inherited a project and want to ensure that it’s all going to plan
- You prefer practical, hands-on learning that you can immediately apply to the real world
- You need to make a change that makes you a little (or a lot) anxious and requires people outside of your direct reporting line to change their behaviour
- You want your team to deliver the change, but still have access to change experts, without the expense of a management consultancy
- You’re willing to put in the work and be patient with yourself and your team as you learn new skills, tools, and ways of thinking about change
You’re NOT a good fit for this programme if:
- You’re looking for a generic project management accreditation like Prince2, PMP, or Agile
- You prefer theory-based learning with clearly defined right and wrong answers
- You need to make a change that you’ve done many times before in an organisation that directly reports to you
- You’re convinced that the change you need to make can be delivered by people working extra hours without any need for additional budget or resource
- You’d be much happier paying a big brand management consultancy to lead the change for you
- You’re not looking to rock the boat or ask senior executives difficult questions
- The idea of leading a change that could seriously impact your career (for good or for ill) makes you break out in a cold sweat
- You’d much prefer this change thing to go away and leave you alone
Hi, I’m Jason
In 2016 I co-founded Underscore with my business partner, Joe. We set out with the ambition to solve a wicked problem. How can we stop so many corporate change initiatives from failing?
When a project fails, it doesn’t just affect the bottom line. It can be a bone-jarring hit to your career. And not just your career. How many times have you seen a C level exec sent packing after a failed corporate transformation or system upgrade?
Despite a multi billion-dollar industry of change methodologies, consultants, coaches, gurus and software solutions, upwards of 70% of change initiatives fail. At least according to the clever people at McKinsey, Bain & Co, Boston Consulting Group, and the Harvard Business Review.
Over the best part of 20 years, Joe and I have led more than 65 business change projects. Projects that have delivered over $100 Million in value for our customers. We’ve also led organisations after we’ve transformed them, and that gives you a whole different perspective on project success and failure.
I survived my first project through naive optimism, grim determination, and a huge amount of luck. And I did it again on the next one. And the next one. I then came seriously unstuck on my fourth project. Three weeks into a new role and I was staring down the business end of £60M court case.
The 9 months it took to dig myself out of that hole gave me a keen interest in understanding what went wrong. And, more importantly, what I could do to avoid the same mistakes next time.
Remember the elephant traps I mentioned earlier? Well, this is one of them. There have been more.
Ever since then, we’ve held ‘lessons learned’ workshops at the end of every project. Documenting everything that went well, everything that went wrong, seeking out the root causes, and applying what we learn to the next project.
We’ve used these insights to build the Change Framework and Toolkit that we now use to deliver projects of all shapes and sizes, from global multi-nationals to national charities.
The past 15 years of corporate change has been driven by waves of enterprise SAAS, social media and mobile innovation. AI is hitting far harder and faster than any previous technology wave. Certainly faster than many organisations have been able to adopt AI and use it at scale.
Which is why we believe that investing in your team’s ability to lead change is so important to your ongoing success.
So, if you see the value in building change leadership capability inside your organisation and drastically increasing your chances of project success. We’re here to help.
Ready to start leading change?
£Free
3 months access to:
- Introduction to Business Change
- Initiate Fundamentals
- Change Toolkit (Initiate only)
- Change Community
£Coming
Soon
12 months access to:
- Introduction to Business Change
- Initiate Fundamentals
- Assess Fundamentals
- Define Fundamentals
- Develop Fundamentals
- Transition Fundamentals
- Optimise Fundamentals
- Change Toolkit
- Change Community
- Master Class Sessions
- Transformation Mindset
