Chief Change Officer™
Change is already working on you. Could you make it work for you?
Chief Change Officer™ is a podcast for people who want to turn change into a breakthrough. It is for those reshaping a career, redirecting an organization, or rebuilding a life.
The show is hosted by Vince Chan, whose first lesson in change came at age four, after a severe arm injury led to surgery, hospitalization, and a long recovery. Since adolescence, she has lived through 20 major transformations across countries, careers, and crises. Before launching the podcast, she spent three decades in global finance and economics, from central banking and credit markets to billion-dollar institutional capital.
That experience taught her that change is never only personal. Markets shift. Institutions decide. Circumstances expand or narrow what people believe is possible. Talent matters, but so do context, timing, and power.
Vince brings together rare minds, black sheep, breakthrough builders, and unconventional champions from around the world. They include scholars who have spent decades studying people and institutions, executives who have carried responsibility through uncertainty, and leaders whose most valuable knowledge was earned beyond the clean lines of a textbook.
Together, they bring what Vince calls hard-earned human intelligence: judgment shaped by consequence and tested by time, trial, and revision.
They do not offer polished success stories or textbook formulas. They reveal what helped when plans collapsed, careers broke open, or life demanded a new direction.
Each conversation turns hard-earned human intelligence into practical judgment: how to understand what is changing, make stronger decisions, and move forward without losing yourself.
Chief Change Officer™ extends Vince’s work beyond markets and institutions into the human side of power and change. How people understand themselves, navigate their environment, and reclaim agency when the old rules no longer hold.
A Global Top 1% podcast and US #1 Careers show, Chief Change Officer™ is built for people who do not want merely to endure change. They want to understand it, use it, and turn it into a breakthrough.
Life is change. The question is whether change works on you, or you learn to make it work for you.
Chief Change Officer™
#405 Richard Carson: Diagnosing Dysfunction, One Broken System at a Time — Part One
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Before Richard Carson wrote The Book of Change, he was writing letters to newspaper editors and fixing chaos in city hall.
In Part One, he retraces the early detours—from archaeology hopeful to urban planner to accidental consultant. With every chapter, one theme stayed constant: real change happens when you stop assuming and start listening. Whether it’s a time-tracking nightmare or a consultant who forgot to swap client names in the proposal, Richard’s stories cut through the noise to reveal why change fails—and what to do instead.
Key Highlights of Our Interview:
From Trowels to Town Halls
“I was studying archaeology. Then I realized I liked systems, not shovels.”
Why solving institutional puzzles beat digging for ancient ones.
Everyone’s Lying—But They Don’t Mean To
“The problem they describe is never the actual problem.”
Richard explains why surface issues are just the smoke, not the fire.
The Timecard Horror Story
“They tracked every 15 minutes. It was organizational madness.”
A micromanagement case study that went down in flames—and what it taught him about autonomy.
Consulting Found Him First
“One day I was hiring consultants. The next, I became one.”
A random audit leads to a career revelation.
Communication Rule #1: Pass the Grocery Store Test
“If you can’t explain it in plain English in front of the broccoli stand, it’s too complicated.”
What city planning taught him about clarity—and why most leaders flunk this test.
Crisis Is a Terrible Thing to Waste
“People don’t want to change unless there’s blood on the floor.”
How to turn urgency into alignment without fearmongering.
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Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Richard H. Carson
--Chief Change Officer--
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