Action Research: The Key to Successful Organizational Change

Join fellow Agile New Englanders for an engaging speaker session in April: “Action Research: The Key to Successful Organizational Change," with
Cristin Hernandez.
Cristin led a $2 million transformation that followed every Change Management Best Practice but delivered nothing. Paradoxically, Cristin led a $20,000 initiative with no formal plan that succeeded beyond expectations. Along the way, Cristin discovered something unsettling: the foundations of modern change management are built on a misunderstanding. The main reason for historically dismal records is that most popular Change Management frameworks make the same mistake: turning emergence into prescription and optimizing plans for management approval rather than for maximum learning. In this live session you will:

1. Learn of the foundational misunderstanding that has distorted modern Change Management, including Kotter’s Eight Steps and the ADKAR framework: a failure to understand the “action research” approach of Kurt Lewin (the “grandfather of change management”).
2. See concrete examples contrasting top-down implementation vs. emergent, learning-based approaches to change management
3. Find out how to redirect your change management activities toward learning instead of control
4. Identify what you can stop doing and how to redirect that energy toward a change management process that actually works

April 2, 2026 [https://agilenewengland.org/successful-organizational-change/](Successful Organizational Change)
5:00-5:30 pm (EDT) - Welcome & Networking with Maggie Natario, Agile New England President
5:30-6:30 pm (EDT) - Agile 101 breakout session with Garry Miller
6:30–7:30 pm - Featured Talk, Successful Organizational Change) with Cristin Hernandez
7:30-7:45 pm - Q&A and Closing Announcements, Maggie Natario
7:45 – 8:00 pm - Networking, free form
Event Duration: up to 3 hours