Post by Bryan Krup

Yesterday our AHEAD OCM team had the chance to attend the 2026 Midwest Change Confererence held in downtown Chicago! Natalie Pearson, Amanda Katz and I had the chance to connect with and hear from our fellow OCM practitioners on the most compelling topics affecting change management today. Some of my key takeaways: 👉Sponsorship is often named as a key determinant of change success. But how are we making it easy for leaders to be a sponsor? I appreciated Monica Canales’ perspective on preparing “Meetings in a box” and cultivating bonds with sponsors. 👉OCM is a beautiful blend of so many disciplines and can take many forms based on leadership, process methodology and culture. The question isn’t whether or not it lives in an ecosystem within organizations, it’s WHICH ecosystem does it live within and is it conducive to realizing value from change initiatives? Tim Creasey and Mike Bullock shared amazing insight and used a cool tool to visualize these ecosystems. 👉OCM is most effective when it’s leader-driven. Yes, the OCM team needs to own and manage the plan. But the leaders, and its teams, have the most context — they just need the right framework and support to run the change. Many more thoughts to share, but I’ll stop here. Thanks to everyone from the ACMP MIDWEST CHAPTER who ran an amazing conference! PS it was also great to make connections with other change leaders like Hilary (Hil) A. Lee Cameron Cammarata Monica Canales and Emily Cramer. #changeleadership #changemanagement #learning