Barrier:
What exactly are we trying to change?

With transformations underway in sectors like Energy, management practitioners & advisors need focus on understanding the fundamentals of the business, the underlying processes & how things really work to make things happen. It sounds simplistic, but the ability of understand the "contents" and the "nitty-grittys" of the specific business domain is very critical to any management professional rather than being management-generalist (managing people and managing finances is critical - what's more critical is to understand the business fundamentals). Case in point: Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos.

There is tremendous propensity for "management education" and "the ability to manage" in the market these days. I think those are tremendously valuable & highly critical attributes we need to gain & demonstrate.  But the fundamentals below that are what i feel are quite challenged in our generation.  Yes, the cream of the crop always exist and we have wonderful examples as the ones cited above. But in the mainstream, several managers seem to turn to consultants to help them "Change" their business because they seem to lack the understanding of their business, lack the political will to do so, lack the understanding of external drivers in the market. With this trend, several industry-generalists have turned into Change Management consultants as their profession - with their primary responsibilities including executive alignment, stakeholder communications, end-user training.  These Change Management practitioners (as a consulting practice) are positioned to cut across several sectors - e.g. Energy, Media & Entertainment, Healthcare, Automotive, Retail. 

Let's take a moment & pause here and "Think".....

Can a strategic task of bringing about a culture of change in a legacy organization like in Energy sector (e.g. a Utility) be trusted with a "Change" practitioner who is a generalist and is positioned to apply their "skillsets" across multiple sectors - their skillsets essentially encompassing a Human Resources, PMP-certified professional one.

The term of "culture of change" encompasses several strategic things in my mind.  When a leader says "my people need to change for my organization or economy or state to improve"  - that change will start only if things are ignited by the leader to promote the change, instead of placing the responsibility on the people.  Case in point: President Obama's pro-active initiatives (whether we agree with him or not..)

Similarly, the change in culture within an organization could potentially need a re-think in underlying business processes, the way data is handled, the models with which partnerships are formed, how people's jobs are incentive-based or not, fundamentally all of this leading to a "culture of trust" or a "culture of fear/safety".   So essentially Change practitioners are responsible for having a deep knowledge of the specific business domain that they are entrusted with bringing about a change. This responsibility needs to be developed from an education level - specific to a sector - about what's required in this case.  Change is best brought from a strong outside force(like the Internet) & subsequently pioneered innovatively inside by a true leader with a deep understanding of the business (Case in point: Jeff Bezos) thereby creating a new market.  Change can also be initiated from "within" even in a legacy sector (Case in point: Jim Rogers) but needs strong field marshals to get the job done.