We are pleased to announce our newest ACMP Carolinas Sponsor, Leslie Ellis. Leslie is a Strategic Change Consultant and Owner of Involved Change Consulting, LLC. 

Sponsor: Leslie Ellis, Strategic Change Consultant & Owner Organization: Involved Change Consulting, LLC

Leslie Ellis is so enthusiastic about her vocation that she chose to sponsor the ACMP Carolinas Chapter. “I have a passion for the change management profession. I think we’re still a very young profession. There’s a lot of opportunity to help people become successful change leaders. That’s the return on investment for my donation,” she said.

As the owner of her own strategic change management consulting firm, Leslie prides herself on helping people and their organizations successfully transition through evolving change initiatives. She helps her clients spend the time upfront to plan and prepare for the change to ensure effective results after the change. That practice is reflected in her favorite quote from Abraham Lincoln, "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."

Leslie uses that wisdom to explain the importance of investing more effort in early planning to save her clients money, time, and resources later. She said, “The first 50 to 60-percent of a project – where we prepare to lead the change – is the most critical to make an initiative successful. I spend more time preparing to chop down the tree so that when I do it it’s easier and more effective.”

After more than ten years as a change management practitioner, Leslie continues to enjoy her work. “I’m never bored. My work is constantly different, and it inspires constant learning and self-mastery for me. I’m always learning something new working with my clients, which makes the job interesting every day.”

Leslie has been a member of ACMP Global for ten years, was a founding board member of the ACMP Charlotte Chapter, and now serves as the interim Membership Committee Chair for the newly formed ACMP Carolinas Chapter.

Wow. What an unprecedented time. History tells us that pandemics hit once every one hundred years, and well, we’re in it. We’ll never forget these days, and they’re certainly changing the ways we do life.

COVID-19 has clearly changed the way we work. Physically, we’re mostly all functioning remotely now, which for change management professionals is a big hurdle to overcome. We’re the group who likes to be onsite, in the conference and breakrooms, and walking the halls, right? We’re all learning how to do our change management work differently, and while there certainly have been failures along the way (we probably all have humorous stories to tell), we’re a smart bunch figuring out how to do this. What the new norm will look like is still to be determined, but I’m convinced that we’ll bring some of these new learnings with us. It’s going to be exciting!

On the ACMP side of things, this month we're pleased to share the first newsletter for the newly formed Carolinas Chapter! I’d like to thank Jonathan Blatt, Leslie Ottavi, Kendra Whitney, Aaron Stroud, Leslie Crain-Ellis, Julie Gawle, Teresa Fabiano, Chris LaPata, and Bill Lickert for their tireless work and countless hours to bring the consolidation to a reality. What a great group of change managers, and if you don’t know them, make it a point to reach out – you’ll be glad you did.

As summer is right around the corner and we roll into the loosening of CV-19 related restrictions, please be careful and stay safe. My best wishes for good health for each of you!

David Chapman, ACMP Carolinas Chapter President

If this COVID-19 quarantine has got you a little stir crazy, check out our new series, Change From Home (CFH). 

CFH will be a series of curated virtual events - all free - that will provide you an opportunity to focus on your development and help you gain new skills and knowledge. We all know how important it is to stay connected in this kind of environment and it's our hope that this series will help enable a connection across the Carolinas. 

As a part of our CFH series, we're excited to announce our Virtual Book Club. Organized and hosted by our board secretary, Cassandra Willis, this club will enable connections as well as offer CCMP PDUs. Visit our Book Club page to learn more and register. 

We are committed to sharing other change management events with you, such as Jeff Skipper's (previous ACMP Alberta president) free video series, Beyond Lockdown: Adaptive Change. Jeff will host multiple sessions. You can register here to get on his mailing list to be notified about these events. 

Finally, don't forget about all the great events hosted by ACMP global. We'll be sure to post information about them on our main Events page in the Other Change Management Events section. 

All of these events are open to members and non-members. 

Be sure to check our website frequently as we will be updating our Event page when we learn about more things! And keep an eye on your inbox too! 

Welcome to our new consolidated regional chapter! On Friday, March 27, 2020, the ACMP Global Board of Directors approved the combination of the Raleigh and Charlotte chapters into the new ACMP Carolinas chapter. While there are still a handful of outstanding consolidation activities, we - the Carolinas board and me - are operating as one consolidated chapter.

For those of you I haven’t had the chance to meet yet, I’m David Chapman and I will be acting as the interim Board of Directors President. Jonathan Blatt, past Raleigh board president, will act as our Vice President. We have put an “interim” board in place to allow us to get up and running while working out the kinks. We expect to hold a full chapter election to elect the permanent Board in the next 3-6 months. Get to know the rest of the interim board.

While this is an exciting time, it also ends the “official” status of the standalone Charlotte Metro and Raleigh chapters. I know there are many of you who have volunteered with your local chapter and were an important part of making it the success it had become.

Thank you!

As we transition to the new ACMP Carolinas chapter, we are grateful to those who have committed their time and energy to making the original two local chapters successful. We realize that you may have some sense of loss over these changes, but we hope that, like us, you will see the many new opportunities that a consolidated chapter will bring. We hope you’ll pour your energy into the newly created entity, which brings new opportunities and relationships to be leveraged and invested in.

Here’s a taste of what you can expect:

• Your home chapter on the acmpglobal.org website will be automatically updated to reflect ACMP Carolinas. No action is needed on your part.
• You can still expect local events and networking opportunities. When we are able to host them again, in-person events will continue as before in Charlotte and Raleigh.
• You can expect many more virtual events, which will bring change managers together across North and South Carolina.
• You’ll start to see expanded programming, including CCMP™ prep workshop, Prosci training offerings and more.
• We will also be expanding our member-only content so if you're not an ACMP member, now is a chance to reconsider that! 

I hope you’ll take a look at our upcoming events. We have a new Change From Home series, which will all be virtual, to help you stay focused on your personal development during our quarantine. If you are interested in getting involved with the new chapter, visit our Get Involved page to learn more.

I look forward to meeting you at an upcoming in-person or virtual event. Thank you for your commitment to ACMP Carolinas.

Cheers to the bright future ahead of us!

David Chapman

ACMP Carolinas Board President

As many of you may have heard, the Charlotte and Raleigh ACMP Chapters will be consolidating into one regional chapter called ACMP Carolinas. The target date to complete this merger is March 31. 

How This Came to Be:

The global ACMP organization approached the Charlotte and Raleigh chapters late summer 2019 to consider joining forces and combining our individual efforts to expand into a Carolinas chapter. This consolidation will allow the new Carolinas chapter to better align with the overall strategy of ACMP, provide synergies across the regions enabling more opportunities for members, while creating more inclusivity for our change management peers across the state who do not have a home chapter to leverage the resources of a larger Carolinas chapter. This expansion also means that we will be able to welcome our friends and neighbors in South Carolina in the future (there is no local ACMP chapter in South Carolina currently). We’re not the first to consolidate, as many of our sister chapters across the country (Pacific Northwest, New England, etc.) have been down this road with great success.

Why We Doing Are This:

When President David Chapman brought this idea to the Charlotte board, there was resistance at first (hey – we’re change managers! We understand resistance!). But the board continued to talk about this. As the Charlotte and Raleigh boards met at the end of 2019 to discuss what the future could look like, we started to consider new and exciting programming and what the new Carolinas chapter structure would be. The more we thought about it and talked about it, the more it seemed like a great idea that would benefit change managers across the whole state (and SC in the future). Here are some of the key benefits of a combined chapter:

• We can leverage the strengths of each chapter
• We can share knowledge and best practices more readily
• We can increase our service offerings to our current membership
• We can reach new members and grow the Carolina's change management community
• We will have an expanded pool of committed volunteers from across the state

There are benefits to you, our members and friends, too:

• You can meet change managers across the region to expand your network
• You will learn from new presenters that may not have presented to an individual chapter due to location constraints
• You can expect state-wide conference-like events in the future
• You can take advantage of new chapter leadership opportunities to grow your network, skills and experiences
• You will see more benefits as members due to the expansion of resources (i.e. people, money, good ideas, etc.)

What’s Been Happening:

A subset of both the Charlotte and Raleigh boards have been meeting at least once a month since late 2019 to envision what a Carolinas chapter could look like. We have a proposed Board structure and both Treasurers have been working hard to consolidate our finances and tax status. We are still in the design phase for some areas but are starting to plan the initial stages especially in programming, membership and administrative consolidation. This is a journey and not something that changes overnight. There is a lot to consider and design so the consolidation benefits you, offering you the most value. It's a great time to get involved....right at the start of this expansion! If you would like to support this journey, join us on March 4.

 What’s Next:

The combined boards are targeting an “official” consolidation on March 31. As you would expect with a volunteer-driven organization, dates may need to shift so we will keep you informed as we progress. Keep an eye on the News page on our website for more. Here are some of the changes you can expect in the coming months:

• The Charlotte and Raleigh websites will merge into one. We have secured the web address acmpcarolinas.org and expect to launch in the April time frame.
• Similar to when we formed the Charlotte chapter, we will have an interim “Formation Committee/Board” in place for a few months to handle the administration of the consolidation. Then, we will open up nominations for the state-wide board to all our members across the region.
• More events. We want to offer more virtual events so our members and friends from across the state can come together to learn. But we will continue to have local events as well. Keep an eye on our Events on our website for more information.
• Member engagement. A big focus for the consolidated chapter is to provide more value for our members at the local level. We know the benefits of a global membership, but being an ACMP member should be local too! We want to find new and creative ways to show our members how important they are.
• Your profile on acmpglobal.org will reflect “Carolinas chapter.” We do not yet know when this transition will occur, or if you will need to manually make the change, but after the consolidation, your home chapter will be listed as Carolinas.

We are really excited about joining forces with our Raleigh team and other interested peers across the Carolinas. We hope you are too and support ACMP as we take the next steps toward making this vision a reality!

--ACMP Charlotte Board of Directors