The Change Canvas

Over the years, based on our experience in guiding profound changes, we have discovered a number of elements that are crucial to jointly determine at the start of the journey. We have brought these ingredients together in a “practical thinking model” that we have called the Change Canvas.

In recent years, this Canvas has been used successfully in kick-starting change in a variety of organizations.

The Change Canvas consists of 4 elements. It all starts with the description of the WHY: the ambitions and the necessity or cause for change.

These are then made explicit in different types of change stories (change narratives) that are explored and shared. We call this the storyboard.

All this leads to the central panel in the Change Canvas: the so-called switchboard. This makes explicit which “covers” are exactly needed in terms of mission, behavior and a series of cultural elements (the cultural cloud) such as core values and rules of conduct.

The right-hand side of the Canvas is called the actionboard and translates the intentions on the switchboard into concrete organization implications for the short term (WHAT).