WORKSHOP  |  ENTERPRISE AGILITY & CHANGE LEADERSHIP

Herding the Big Cats

Transitioning the Reluctant Organisation

“Strategy doesn’t fail in the boardroom. It fails in the corridors.”

The boardroom approves the plan. The money gets allocated. The decks look compelling. Then the change hits the meetings, emails, and one-to-ones nobody puts on the programme plan — and that’s where transformational change quietly dies in the meeting rooms and organisational corridors. Not because the strategy was wrong, but because nobody dealt with the politics.

Herding the Big Cats is a practical, dialogic workshop for engaging and mobilising middle and senior management to make transformational change happen.

What You’ll Work Through — 60 Minutes, Four Parts

• The Corridor Problem — why the boardroom “yes” becomes a corridor “no,” and why transformation fatigue sets in before the first sprint ends.
• The Politics of Reluctance — influence maps, seven archetypes of resistance, and the grey eminence: the person not on the plan who decides whether it lives or dies.
• Exercise: Map Your Landscape — build a live influence map for a real transformation you’re trying to land. Identify your grey eminence.
• Three Levers + Principles — narrative, coalition, early wins, and seven principles for bottom-up change. The conversation you’ve been avoiding.

You’ll Leave With

• A live influence map of the change you’re trying to land right now — a living document, reviewed at least every quarter.
• A named grey eminence — the single highest-leverage conversation you haven’t yet had.
• One honest conversation to have this week.

Who It’s For

This workshop is for anyone selling agile transformation into a reluctant enterprise — or trying to make it happen inside one. Built for change leads, transformation programme leaders, and the middle and senior managers who carry change through the corridors.