Resilience in the Face of Futility: How I’ve Learned to Stay Positive & Motivated as a Change Agent

Find out more, and download the slides, in the Business Agility Library:

Change is hard, and leading change can feel even harder. Many companies know enough to know they have to change, but often the environment can be negative if not outright hostile for the people who are invited in to lead the change. It can be a lonely and thankless position.

In this talk, I explore practices and tactics that have helped me and other change agents stay positive, recognize progress, and maintain momentum in the face of what can often feel like utter futility.

About the Speaker:

Neil Fasen
Neil Fasen is change agent who helps Enterprises evolve to more effectively compete in today’s complex world. He is both an evangelist and practitioner of business agility and product management with many years of experience working in Fortune 50-100 companies. In his current role as Senior Director of Product Practices at Best Buy, Neil is a key leader in shaping the company’s path for change. He is part of Best Buy’s Transformation and Planning leadership team, heads up the company’s Product Management Community of Practice, and leads their Agile Coaching organization. Through these efforts, Neil has been leading the charge to move Best Buy from an output to an outcome focus by exposing and evolving their systems of work, cultural norms, and ways of working.

Prior to Best Buy, Neil spend over a decade at Target where he worked in a variety of roles that helped establish and advance Target’s product model. Neil was a founding member of Target’s first mobile product teams and later Target’s Cartwheel team, where he was able to model new ways of working that improved time to learning and time to value which in turn significantly influenced how Target would continue to transform its digital operating model.