Change Management, Selling, Enablement — Who Are We Really Serving?

Tim Ohai thinks change management is a scam. He's got receipts — he used to be the guy they put on stage to sell it.

His argument is simple and it stings: change management is written from the organization's point of view, never the individual's. So I stopped him and asked him to swap in two different words. Sales enablement. He didn't hesitate. Same thing. We're just going to shove it onto people and hope they like it.

That's the conversation. Three disciplines, one mistake — we keep building for the org and delivering to a human being who never got asked.

Tim wrote Sales Chaos in 2011, before most of the industry had settled on what to call any of this. He's since walked away from the enablement label entirely for strategic execution, which he'll tell you is the thing nobody was ever formally taught. He asks rooms full of leaders who was trained to execute strategy. Crickets. Every time.

We get into why 95% of AI initiatives produce nothing measurable and why that's not the AI's fault. Why most pipeline reviews inspect the deal instead of the customer. And the UK team that nearly doubled its win rate off one conversation their reps didn't want to have — because a GM refused to move on to the next idea for three straight quarters.

The line that stuck with me: if I don't have clarity and I don't have empowerment, coaching is just a nice hug.

Tim's at timohai.com, and he's very active on LinkedIn.

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