The Change Shop(™) is an integrated platform of six tools that enables change leaders (project managers, executives, organizational change managers, HR professionals) to collect feedback on change initiatives, analyze the results, benchmark to other organizations, and manage actions/tasks across the full life-cycle of organizational changes and transformations.

The company's mission is to empower change leaders across organizations spanning all industries to create change capacity in their teams to foster stronger organizational performance.

Committed Leadership

Robert E. Smith, PhD. is the Founder of The Change Shop (TCS), where he provides tools to change leaders to help them create future workplaces. The TCS platform and benchmarks are based on his dissertation research into factors most associated with highly engaged commitment to change and workplace transformations. With a career spanning human capital technology, talent management and change leadership, Robert has led large-scale change initiatives at dozens of global and public sector organizations including PepsiCo, Polo Ralph Lauren, and AT&T. Along with his partner, Shermica Farquhar, Vice President of TCS's Consulting and Advisory Practice, The Change Shop offers end-to-end change analytics, customized assessments, change leadership training, and change management / change communications strategy consulting.

As a career-long HR professional, author and organizational change expert, Robert is sought after for his ideas on ways to increase engagement during difficult organizational transformations. Smith is the author of the 2018 book, 'Selling Change: How Successful Leaders Use Impact, Influence, and Consistency to Transform Their Organizations.'

Robert was a panelist at the 2018 National conference for Society for Industrial-Organizational Psychologists (SIOP) national conference and was a sponsor and presenter of the 2019 Nonprofit HR CHRO Retreat. Throughout 2020, he will be presenting his 2IsC(TM) framework for highly engaged commitment to change and his work on the role of people data in digital transformations at the Association for Training and Development (ATD), the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).

Creating Change Strategies for the HR and Talent Industry 

Change data and analytics is critical for every organization that wants to save money and improve financial performance. With the right data, change managers can confidently build more accurate models and prescribe strategies that will help organizations meet their needs.

Business leaders can now rely on people data to inform their change strategies because data removes the guesswork from the decision-making process around how to get people to commit and buy-in to workplace change. To remain competitive and innovative, businesses need to leverage data at the core of their change management processes. This is done by deploying platforms that ensure they can collect and act on critical employee feedback data.

The Change Shop platform offers comprehensive, cloud-based change management software built for multi-platform environments that helps major stakeholders in every business manage relationships, plan interventions and align around change impacts. It is the perfect platform for any change leader trying to digitally transform their business, conduct a reorganization, or quickly integrate a recent acquisition.

The Rush of Innovation

According to Robert, change management as a profession is typically seen as something that is done through person-led interventions versus data/analytics and SaaS-based tools. Making this mindset shift for leaders will be a difficult but necessary change to move people into transformation 2.0.

Data-Driven Shift to Better Management

Change management is in the midst of a shift from intuition to more feedback and data-based decision-making approaches, with program managers at the forefront of this shift. This move to a data-centric approach will shift change management from an art to a science, where change leaders can now rely on data to examine, inform and iterate their change management approach and strategies. Instead of waiting to get data themselves, employers can make use of data from mobile phones and other devices to collect feedback and manage change. These capabilities come at a critical time as a recent report found that HR leaders feel they are:

•  36 percent less effective at anticipating and reacting to high-speed change

•  40 percent worse at using data to guide business decisions

•  57 percent worse than their non-HR counterparts at operating in a highly digital environment

Now, more than ever, HR and Change Managers need the right tools to better predict and manage workplace change.

What People Are Saying

"The 2IsC™ path for change is simple to apply. In the midst of an acquisition, we were able to apply it in real-time. The Change Shop™ tools make it possible to improve change outcomes." – Gretchen Thompson, Human Resources Project Manager, C.H. Robinson Companies

"Successfully driving change is one of the most critical, yet least-understood, concepts for leaders. Selling Change combines an academic primer with new, cutting-edge research to provide practical insights and concrete steps for those tasked with moving organizations to the future." – Rick Clevette, Senior Vice President, Human Resources, Mortenson Construction, Inc.

Additionally, Robert E. Smith, PhD. Founder / CEO, The Change Shop says – "I believe in the power of people data to help organizations generate the commitment they need to adapt, grow, and change more effectively."

Steps to Overcome Challenges

The biggest challenge for the company has been getting the word out about its amazing platform.

According to Robert Smith, TCS is looking forward to presenting at the HR Technology Conference, the Association for Change Management Practitioners conference and the HR West conferences in 2020 to spread the word.

Digitally Transforming the Future

Change data and analytics is critical for every organization that wants to save money and improve financial performance. With the right data, change managers can confidently build more accurate models and prescribe strategies that will help organizations meet their needs.

Robert believes that now, more than ever, HR and Change Leaders need the right tools to better predict and manage workplace change.

The Change Shop™ offers comprehensive, cloud-based change management software built for multi-platform environments that helps major stakeholders in every business manage relationships, plan interventions and align around change impacts. It is the perfect platform for any change leader trying to digitally transform their business, conduct a reorganization, or quickly integrate a recent acquisition.