Welcome to the website of the Change Architect (‘de Veranderarchitect’ in Dutch), a partner network of professionals that supports organisations in the design, execution and evaluation of their goal oriented change initiatives and their processes of policy definition and decision taking.

I, Rob van der Eyden, have founded the Change Architect in 2005 and have been working as an independent facilitator of behavioural change initiatives since then. From policysetting to operational behaviour in practice. And from operation back to the policies. With all challenges you meet in such processes.

As Change architect and during the eight years before that working for the consulting practice of Accenture, I have been able to facilitate a diverse range of change initatives. As project- or programmemanager, facilitator and/or subject matter expert.

Change initiatives exist in a wide range of shape and sizes. The objective can be to implement a new strategy, to increase revenues and/or decrease costs, to enhance quality, to define and operationalise new policies, to realise improvements in business processes, to comply to regulations, to merge organisational units or to improve their cooperation. Often the ultimate succes of these change initiatives comes down to the behaviour of the people involved. The mission of the Change Architect is to support goal oriented behavioural change initatives.

At lot has been said and written about how to succesfully ‘manage’ change. The Change architect does not pretend to have ‘the wholy grail’ available. I do believe that behaviour cannot be changed or controlled as directly as is sometimes pretended. And I have experienced that the way processes of policy setting and decision making are run, have an important influence on their changes to succes. Both in ‘one-off’ (eenmalige) change projects and in ongoing ‘business a usual’ policy setting and decision taking. Unfortunately this influence is not always a positive one. Because policies and decisions are more often posed upon the ones who have to execute them, instead of being defined with them. And that does not invite to take ownership and responsibility for the execution…

But there are alternatives. And I would be pleased to tell you more about them. Partially via this website. Preferably in a personal conversation.

I hope to hear from you.

You can reach me at +31 6 512 72 127 or via mail: robvandereyden@veranderarchitect.nl

Rob van der Eyden, November 2013