Transformation Coach
Coaching leaders to design change their organizations choose to adopt.
The Irresistible Change coaching approach
Phil coaches leaders through the same core architecture that made IBM’s transformation scale:
- Treat change like a product
If you want adoption, you must design for a customer. In coaching, that means clarifying:- Who is the “customer” for the change (teams, managers, stakeholders)
- What problem the change truly solves (not the slide version)
- What must be true for people to choose it
- How you’ll learn, iterate, and improve adoption over time
- Build around teams, not individuals
Transformation doesn’t scale one person at a time. It scales through teams—how work gets done, decisions get made, and behaviors get reinforced. - Design the system that makes change inevitable
Coaching focuses on aligning the levers that actually determine behavior:- incentives and metrics
- operating cadence
- decision rights
- communication and narrative
- talent systems
- the environment where work happens
When these align, change becomes “obvious.” When they don’t, change becomes performative.
What makes this different
Phil’s credibility isn’t theoretical. It’s operational. It can also be fun!
His work leading change at scale became the subject of a Harvard Business School case study and coverage in outlets including The New York Times and Fortune, as well as the documentary The Loop.
He brings that same practical rigor—and the sense of play that all innovation requires—into coaching: fewer abstractions, more decision clarity—because on the other side of the conversation is an organization that either adopts the change or doesn’t.
Architecting a system
Most coaching focuses on you as an individual. Phil’s coaching focuses on you as the architect of a system—teams, decisions, incentives, environments, and narratives that either produce adoption or resistance.
Common outcomes include:
- A clear transformation agenda (what matters most, what can wait, what must stop)
- A plan designed for adoption—not just implementation
- A credible operating model for change (roles, decision rights, cadence, governance)
- A strategy for “earning buy-in” with skeptical leaders and exhausted teams
- A way to scale: pilots → proof → pull-through → enterprise rollout
- Better executive conversations: fewer vague commitments, more real decisions
- Momentum—the kind that survives beyond the kickoff and the first quarter
Who Phil coaches
Phil’s coaching is built for leaders facing high-stakes moments, including:
- CEOs and executive leadership teams navigating enterprise transformation
- Transformation leaders accountable for adoption, not announcements
- CHRO / COO / CDO / CIO-level leaders coordinating cross-functional change
- Design, product, and technology executives scaling new ways of working
- Leaders inheriting a change effort that’s stalled, politicized, or fragmented
If you’re trying to move a large organization with limited authority, competing priorities, and a “frozen middle,” this work is for you.