Lead Change from the Inside Out
Lead Change from the Inside Out is for professionals leading change across organizations and communities who want to build alignment, navigate complexity, and lead with presence—without burning out or over-functioning.
Lead Change from the Inside Out
How to Lead Change Well When You Have Too Many Priorities Competing for Your Time
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
If you’re leading change while still being expected to deliver results, support your team, and respond in real time—you’re not imagining how hard this feels.
In this episode, Chandra unpacks why change so often stalls in fast-moving environments—and why the issue isn’t your time management or prioritization.
What You’ll Learn
- Why change loses out to day-to-day demands
- The difference between running vs. changing the business
- Why “fitting change in” doesn’t work
- How to create space for real movement
If this episode resonated, this is the work I do with leaders and teams—helping you lead with steadiness and clarity so change can actually move forward.
You can learn more about working together by contacting me here.
If you're leading change right now, but the business hasn't slowed down at all, you're not imagining how hard this feels. Because you're not just leading change. You're still expected to deliver results, hit targets, support your team, and respond to issues in real time. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, you're supposed to move something forward. Welcome to Lead Change from the Inside Out, the podcast for leaders who want to move change forward without losing credibility, confidence, or trust. I'm your host, Chandra Owens. I spent over a decade leading change inside complex organizations, and I created this space because I kept seeing the same thing over and over again. Leaders who were capable, thoughtful, and committed, but stuck trying to lead change in environments that never slowed down enough to support it. So what actually happens? The business takes over because it has to. It's visible, it's immediate, and it has consequences right now. And that change you're leading, it becomes something you can get to when you can. So you handle what's in front of you all day and tell yourself you'll come back to the change. You may even join meetings about it, but don't have the space to really move anything forward. Or you may revisit the same decisions because there hasn't been enough focus to close them, or even tell your team, we need to prioritize this, but never quite create the space for them to do it. And over time, you begin to feel that the change you're leading is always behind. And here's the part that matters. This isn't a time problem. It's not even a prioritization problem. It's that you're being asked to do two different kinds of leadership at the same time. Run the business and change the business. And those require completely different things from you. Running the business rewards, speed, responsiveness, and keeping things moving. Leading change requires space, clarity, and intentional focus. And when those collide, speed wins every time. So the issue isn't that you're not prioritizing well, it's that you're trying to lead change in the same way you run the business, and that does not work. Because change doesn't move in the margins of your day. If the business gets all of your best energy, the change will always get what's left. And leading change well means deciding what is required to ensure your change moves forward. Not how do I fit it in or squeeze it in, but what can I do to actually move it forward. So here's a question I want you to sit with this week. Where does my leadership actually create movement right now? Not where am I needed, not what feels urgent, but where does my involvement change the trajectory of this work? Because if you don't ask yourself that, you'll continue to give your time to what's loudest instead of what actually moves things forward. You see, if you don't make that shift, your change, it won't fail all at once. It'll just stall. And one of two things will happen. Either your team will remain anchored in doing what already exists, or they will fail miserably with the new ways of working. When you ask yourself, where does my involvement change the trajectory of this work? You shift from trying to manage change alongside everything else to intentionally creating space where change actually moves. You won't consistently give the business your best energy and the change what's left, but you will actively decide where you focus your energies. You won't feel like you're always behind, but you'll begin to lead with clarity, even in the middle of real demands. If this is not how you feel right now, take a breath and acknowledge that you're leading in a system that was never designed to make this easy. But your impact right now is not about how much you can carry, it's about what you choose to move. So focus on one thing, one thing that you can do to move the change forward. And when you feel comfortable with that, add a second activity and then a third. And you'll see that your change will move in the direction that you want it to go. Thank you for listening to Lead Change from the Inside Out. Make sure that you're subscribed so you don't miss what's coming next. And if you're doing this work inside your organization and you're ready to go deeper, not just in what you do, but in how you show up, there's a next step for you in the show notes. Remember, the work you do matters, and so does the person you're becoming through it. I'll see you in the next episode.