Buyer Beware: In a Sea of Change Management “Experts”…Look Closer.

Followers. Certifications. Degrees. Big-name firms. Decades of experience. All can matter. None, by itself, proves expertise.

I recently saw a post arguing that credentials and certifications are not necessary in change management.

That position is fair to debate. Credentials alone do not create competence.

But the person making the argument also listed a long collection of certifications.

That contradiction made me think about a much bigger issue in our field:

How do buyers actually determine who is qualified to advise them on organizational change?

We have created some convenient shortcuts.

• Thirty years in the field? Expert.
• A doctorate? Expert.
• A major consulting logo? Expert.
• Ten certifications? Expert.
• Ten thousand followers? Thought leader.
• A confident post? Must be true.

Not so fast.

A degree does not automatically make someone an expert. A certification does not automatically make someone competent. Thirty years of experience does not mean thirty years of effective practice. A large audience measures reach, not accuracy.

The question is not whether credentials, education, experience, or visibility matter.

They can.

The better question is:

What is this person’s expertise actually built on?

Change Management Is Not Just a Toolkit. It Is Grounded in Academic Disciplines.

One reason this conversation matters is that organizational change is not simply a collection of templates, communications plans, stakeholder maps, and implementation checklists.

There is an extensive academic discipline behind it.

Organizational development and change draw from organizational development, management, psychology, leadership, human development, learning, sociology, systems thinking, decision science, and related disciplines.

My recent doctoral comprehensive synthesis reinforced just how conceptually diverse the field is and how many competing assumptions exist about how change occurs, how leadership influences it, how employees make meaning, and even how success should be measured.

Da Ros, Vainieri, and Bellé (2023), in a broad synthesis of organizational change management research, describe a field with multiple architectures, approaches, and disciplinary influences. By, Burnes, and Oswick (2011) similarly argued that change management remains a field still working through important conceptual questions.

That should tell us something.

Change management is not simple because organizations and people are not simple.

There are doctoral programs in organizational development and change for a reason. There are graduate disciplines devoted to human development, organizational behavior, leadership, psychology, and related areas because understanding how people and systems change requires study.

Clinical mental health disciplines also spend years studying behavior change. Practitioners use approaches such as motivational interviewing to help people examine ambivalence, strengthen their own motivation, and move toward change rather than being told to comply.

If we are going to borrow concepts from those fields, we should have enough education to understand what they mean, how they are used, and where their boundaries lie.

Education and Scholarship: Same Family, Different Language

When I use the word scholarship, I mean disciplined education and inquiry: studying what is already known, examining competing theories, evaluating research, questioning assumptions, and contributing new knowledge when gaps remain.

That matters because advanced education is not simply about accumulating more degrees.

At its best, doctoral education teaches people how to ask different questions:

• How do we know this?
• What evidence supports it?
• How was it measured?
• Was the study designed well?
• Can the finding be generalized?
• What competing explanations exist?
• What does the broader literature say?
• Where are the gaps?
• And what new knowledge needs to be created?

One purpose of doctoral research is exactly that: to move beyond consuming existing knowledge and learn how to identify gaps, design rigorous inquiry, and contribute original knowledge to a field.

That does not mean everyone with a PhD is an expert in everything.

Far from it.

A doctorate in history is an accomplishment. It does not, by itself, establish expertise in organizational change, psychology, neuroscience, or human behavior.

The field of the degree matters. The quality of the institution matters. The recency of the education matters. And what someone has done to remain current matters.

A degree earned thirty years ago may have provided an excellent foundation.

But what has happened since?

• Has the person continued studying?
• Published peer-reviewed research or other substantive professional work?
• Conducted research?
• Completed additional education?
• Updated their understanding as evidence changed?

Expertise is not something we earn once and store on a shelf.

And What Exactly Counts as “Evidence”?

This is where business conversations frequently become muddled.

• A company benchmark can be useful data.
• A case study can be useful data.
• A success story can be useful data.
• An employee survey can be useful data.

None automatically proves that an approach works broadly.

From an academic research perspective, evidence must be evaluated in relation to the claim being made.

• A benchmark may tell us what a particular group of companies reports doing. It does not necessarily tell us that the practice caused better outcomes.
• A case study can provide deep insight into what happened in one organization. It may not generalize to another organization with a different culture, workforce, industry, leadership system, or history.
• A survey may identify an association. It does not automatically establish causation.

Good research does more than collect opinions or examples. It uses a structured process to gather and test data, enabling us to assess the trustworthiness of the findings.

Evidence is not simply, “We saw this happen.”

And it is definitely not:

“Several successful companies do this, so everyone should.”

Benchmarks may be informative. They should not be disguised as universal proof.

This is particularly important in change management because researchers have challenged the field’s reliance on so-called best practices.

Hallencreutz and Turner (2011) found no clear-cut, evidence-based definition of best practice in organizational change. Turner, Haley, and Hallencreutz (2009) similarly questioned how best practice is defined.

Many so-called “best practices” are built on benchmarks, success stories, and popularity rather than strong scientific evidence.

That does not make benchmarking useless.

It means we need to stop confusing popular practice with proven practice.

The 70% Myth Shows What Happens When We Stop Asking Questions

Perhaps no example makes the point better than change management’s favorite statistic:

“70% of change initiatives fail.”

• How many presentations have included it?
• How many consulting proposals?
• How many articles?
• How many LinkedIn posts?

It sounds authoritative because it has been repeated for years.

There is just one problem.

Hughes (2011) critically examined the claim and found no valid and reliable empirical evidence supporting the familiar assertion that 70% of organizational change initiatives fail.

Yet the number still circulates.

Why?

Because repetition creates familiarity.

Familiarity begins to look like truth.

And once something becomes part of professional folklore, people stop checking the source.

• That is why education matters.
• That is why research literacy matters.
• That is why critical thinking matters.

Without them, we do not just inherit knowledge. We inherit myths.

Why the Scholar-Practitioner Model?

The scholar-practitioner model is powerful.

A scholar without practice can understand theory beautifully and still underestimate organizational reality.

A practitioner without continued academic study can develop tremendous judgment while unknowingly relying on outdated or false assumptions.

The scholar-practitioner brings the two together.

• Education informs practice.
• Practice tests education against reality.
• Experience produces new questions.
• Research helps examine those questions.
• New knowledge improves practice.

That is a win-win.

• The organization gets someone who understands the research and recognizes when the real world does not neatly fit the model.
• The practitioner can draw from academic theory without being trapped by it.
• They can use experience without mistaking personal experience for universal truth.
• They can respect established models while still questioning whether those models fit the research and contemporary organizations.

And that matters more than ever.

Research in organizational change increasingly challenges simple, linear, one-size-fits-all thinking.

Bushe and Marshak (2009) emphasized meaning-making and dialogic approaches to organizational development.

Pettigrew’s (1985) work highlighted the importance of historical and organizational context.

Burnes (1996) repeatedly challenged the idea that there is one best way to manage change.

And Peng et al. (2021), in a meta-analysis of 30 studies involving more than 12,000 participants, found that transformational leadership was associated with several employee attitudes toward change but did not demonstrate a significant relationship with actual support for change.

That is what good research often does.

It complicates the catchy answer.

And that is useful.

There Are Plenty of “Experts.” How Many Are True Scholar-Practitioners?

Social media has made expertise harder to evaluate because authority cues are everywhere.

• A polished brand.
• A bestselling book.
• A keynote reel.
• A major consulting firm.
• Twenty thousand followers.
• Thirty years of experience.

None of those are inherently bad.

But none should end your due diligence.

When advice can change how people are led, managed, or treated, credibility should be examined rather than assumed.

So, before hiring or following the advice of a change-management “expert,” here are five questions to ask.

1. What Is Their Education Actually In?

What Are Their Degrees Actually In?

Look beyond the degrees themselves and ask:

• Are the fields relevant to the expertise being claimed?
• Were the degrees earned from credible, accredited institutions?
• How deeply did those programs prepare them in that subject?
• When were the degrees earned, and how have they kept that knowledge current?

Advanced degrees can be impressive, but degrees in unrelated fields do not automatically establish expertise in organizational change.

The question is not simply how many degrees someone has. It is whether those degrees are relevant to the expertise they claim.

What Are Their Certifications Actually Built On?

Not all certifications carry the same rigor.

Before being impressed by the certifications, look beyond the letters and ask:

• What body of knowledge was the program based on?
• Was that knowledge grounded in credible research and established academic disciplines?
• Who developed the program, and what expertise or education qualified them to do so?
• Is the content supported by independent research, or primarily by the organization’s own benchmarks, methods, or claims?

A certification is only as strong as the knowledge behind it.

Certifications should be examined, not simply counted.

2. How Have They Kept Their Knowledge Current?

Expertise has a shelf life if it is never refreshed.

Look beyond the original degree or certification.

• Has this person continued learning?
• Published in peer-reviewed or respected professional journals?
• Conducted rigorous research?
• Completed additional graduate education or substantive professional development?
• Contributed new ideas that others can examine?
• Engaged seriously with new evidence?
• Updated their thinking when the field changed?

A degree earned thirty years ago may provide an important foundation, but current expertise depends on what someone has done to continue learning since then.

3. What Have They Actually Done and What Were They Accountable For?

Advising change and being accountable for living through it are different experiences.

External advisors can bring valuable breadth across organizations. Internal leaders experience something different: what happens after the recommendation is made, when employees react, implementation gets messy, tradeoffs emerge, and the organization must live with the consequences.

Neither perspective should be dismissed. But advising alone does not provide the same experience as owning implementation and outcomes internally.

Ask:

• Did they advise the change, lead it, or both?
• Were they accountable for implementation?
• Did they remain involved when problems emerged?
• Did they measure whether the change produced sustained results?

Experience is deeper when you have had to live with the consequences of the advice you give.

4. What Is Their Advice Built On?

• Research?
• Theory?
• Professional experience?
• A benchmark?
• A case study?
• A proprietary methodology?
• Opinion?

All can have value.

But they are not equivalent.

• If someone says, “research shows,” ask for the research.
• If someone says, “best practice,” ask how “best” was established.
• If someone says, “I’ve seen this for thirty years,” respect the experience but recognize it as experience.
• If someone says, “benchmark data,” remember that a benchmark is not automatically rigorous scientific research. Ask how the data were collected, whether established research methods were used, whether the findings were independently tested, and if it is presented as research, ask to see the original study and data behind the claim.

A credible expert should be able to distinguish:

Evidence. Theory. Experience. Interpretation. Opinion.

5. Can Their Expertise Survive Scrutiny?

This may be the most revealing question.

What happens when someone knowledgeable respectfully challenges the expert’s claim?

• Do they become curious?
• Provide stronger evidence?
• Clarify their reasoning?
• Acknowledge limitations?
• Reconsider part of the argument?

Or do they invoke their title, follower count, years of experience, or authority to dismiss the challenge or attack the person raising it?

Expertise should increase our ability to withstand scrutiny, not reduce it.

Buyer Beware and Be Aware

This article focuses on change management, but the same critical-thinking lens can be applied to almost any professional advice we consume on social media.

• Leadership
• AI
• Human resources
• Psychology
• Finance
• Career advice
• Organizational culture

Influence is not evidence.

Confidence is not competence.

Experience is not automatically expertise.

Education matters, but the field, depth, quality, recency, and continued application of that education matter too.

Certifications can matter, but what they represent matters more than how many appear after a name.

And a large audience tells us that an idea travels.

It does not tell us that the idea deserves to travel.

Many people call themselves experts in change management.

Let us become much more interested in identifying the scholar-practitioners among them, the people who combine deep education with substantive practice, continually test what they know, understand research, question assumptions, stay current, know the boundaries of their expertise, and are willing to create better approaches when the old ones no longer fit.

• Because transformations are ongoing
• Organizations are continually adapting
• AI is reshaping how work gets done
• Employees are evolving in how they relate to authority, information, and organizations

Our approaches need to evolve, too.

At The Huddle Pros, this is part of what we mean when we say it is time to flip the script.

Not by rejecting everything we have learned.

By understanding it deeply enough to know what to keep, what to question, and what we need to create next.

Buyer beware. And buyer be aware.

• Before you hire the expert
• Before you implement the framework
• Before you repeat the statistic
• Before you follow the advice

Ask one more question:

What is this expertise actually built on?

If this made you think differently about how we evaluate expertise, share it.

Help more leaders, organizations, and buyers look beyond the title, follower count, and sales pitch, and start asking better questions.

Let’s flip the script—together.

Sources & Further Reading

Access note. The DOI links below lead to the official publication records. Full-text access to some journal articles may require a university or institutional subscription.

By, R. T., Burnes, B., & Oswick, C. (2011). Change Management: The Road Ahead. Journal of Change Management. https://doi.org/10.1080/14697017.2011.548936(opens in new tab)

Burnes, B. (1996). No Such Thing as … a ‘One Best Way’ to Manage Organizational Change. Management Decision. https://doi.org/10.1108/00251749610150649(opens in new tab)

Bushe, G. R., & Marshak, R. J. (2009). Revisioning Organization Development: Diagnostic and Dialogic Premises and Patterns of Practice. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886309335070(opens in new tab)

Da Ros, A., Vainieri, M., & Bellé, N. (2023). An Overview of Reviews: Organizational Change Management Architecture. Journal of Change Management. https://doi.org/10.1080/14697017.2023.2197451(opens in new tab)

Hallencreutz, J., & Turner, D. M. (2011). Exploring Organizational Change Best Practice: Are There Any Clear-Cut Models and Definitions? International Journal of Quality and Service Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1108/17566691111115081(opens in new tab)

Hughes, M. (2011). Do 70 Per Cent of All Organizational Change Initiatives Really Fail? Journal of Change Management. https://doi.org/10.1080/14697017.2011.630506(opens in new tab)

Peng, J., Li, M., Wang, Z., & Lin, Y. (2021). Transformational Leadership and Employees’ Reactions to Organizational Change: Evidence From a Meta-Analysis. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886320920366(opens in new tab)

Pettigrew, A. M. (1985). The Awakening Giant: Continuity and Change in ICI. Basil Blackwell.

Turner, D.M., Haley, H., & Hallencreutz, J. (2009). Towards a global definition of best practice in change management. Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Change Management. https://doi.org/10.18848/1447-9524/CGP/v09i08/49729(opens in new tab)