Our life's work has always been about change. Dean started his career in the field of personal change, and Linda in organizational change. In 1986, when we met, it became clear that our two professional specialties were meant to be merged into one unified approach to transforming organizations.

Dean was one of the first people doing deep personal mastery work in organizations, having created the Optimal Performance Institute to offer his approach to breakthrough performance (originally developed for world-class athletes) to people in business. Linda was one of the founding leaders of the Organization Transformation movement, focusing on teaching the process of organization change and transformational leadership to executives and consultants worldwide. At the time of our meeting, Dean had realized that his personal and team performance models and interest in culture had to align with the complexities of larger organizational systems, while Linda had recognized that her work required more overt emphasis on personal and cultural change to fortify her large systems work. Both our interests and the requirements of successful large system transformation were moving each of us toward the other's expertise.

In 1988, we brought our specialties, insights, and theories together to create an integrated approach to leading transformation and to form Being First, Inc. In our early years, we mentored and coached one another in our individual specialties; now, we each stand in both arenas—personal and organizational transformation—and consult to senior executives across industries, government, the military, and large nonprofits.

Individually, and then collectively at Being First, we have always considered ourselves thought leaders in the area of transformation, not so much because of what we know, but because of the cutting edges we are willing to explore and the continual learning and development we pursue. We are committed to pushing the envelope of thinking and practice for accomplishing tangible, breakthrough-level results. We created Being First—appropriately named for our bias toward the personal work required to transform individuals and organizations—to offer our thinking and advice to people and organizations around the world.

Being First, Inc. is a full-service change education, consulting, and change leadership development firm assisting organizations to maximize their business results from change, transform their people and culture, and build internal change capability. We provide organizational change capability and change strategy consulting, enterprise-wide breakthrough training for culture and mindset change, change leadership skill development for leaders and consultants, licensing of our change process methodology, coaching, personal transformation training, and transformational team development. We support clients to create strategic disciplines for change so that their organizations can embody masterful change leadership and increase their success from change. We are developing a curriculum for women leaders and managers and are planning a worldwide Change Leadership Institute.

Our style, based on our commitment to walk our own talk, is to co-create a personalized strategy for each client with the appropriate balance of consulting, training, and methodology, integrating personal change and organizational change. We are devoted to our own continuous learning and development through applying our own personal practices and true partnerships with our clients. Our personal and organizational work provides us the opportunity to develop, field test, and write about what we see is required to transform human systems successfully and consciously.

We released the first edition of this book and its companion volume, Beyond Change Management, in 2001. Much has happened since then—in the world, in organizations, and in us. The messages of the first edition are as relevant today as they were then, and in many ways, more so. The challenges of change leadership continue to increase. Transformations in organizations are ever more complex, the stakes are higher, and the impact these changes are having on people and culture are more profound now than ever. These challenges are requiring leaders and those that consult to them to advance their thinking and methods. As we develop and evolve ourselves, we see with ever-greater clarity and distinction what is required to succeed at transformation—personally, organizationally, and globally.

In this new edition of The Change Leader's Roadmap, we have attempted to capture how our thinking has changed and what is true for us in this moment in time about how to best navigate an organization's transformation. We have reorganized Phases I and II to emphasize the importance of building a conscious change strategy and organizational change capability, respectively; streamlined the work of all nine phases; and shortened titles. We have added several new strategies for leveraging the value of The Change Leader's Roadmap, and we have sharpened our thinking on how to put it to best use.

For three decades, we have thoroughly engaged in the debate of personal change versus organization change, change the people or change the structures, carefully plan change versus let it unfold, manage change versus consciously lead it, and focus on process versus outcomes. The debates continue to drive our investigation and fuel the wisdom we seek to share. In our writing, we have attempted to be forthright about what we see as true, while keeping our mindset and eyes open to what we do not yet understand. We have attempted to denote what we think is factual, what we believe due to our own experiences, and what we are still learning or questioning.

We invite you, our reader, into this exploration with us—into the inquiry—into our attempt to give language, guidance, and incentive to growing the field of conscious change leadership. We hope you will participate in the conversation about the issues and propositions in these books, and then put them to the test in your own conscious leadership of change.

Please read on with the spirit of inquiry. Read with your concern for the state of today's organizations. Read to contribute to our collective ability to transform organizations into places in which people love to work and feel regenerated, as well as add value to their customers and stakeholders. Read on with a concern for people and the world, and how to make our lives ever more healthy and meaningful as we collectively co-create a future of greater social justice and environmental sustainability. Read on while honoring how far the fields of organization transformation, change management, and change leadership have come from the first attempts to infuse the values of planned change and human development into organizations. And please read with yourself in mind as a leader or consultant of change. Our message is written for you, and we hope it benefits you personally and professionally.

Dean Anderson

Linda Ackerman Anderson

Durango, Colorado

Spring 2010