Every change agent has an origin story. What’s yours?

Let’s explore origin stories—those pivotal moments when someone decides they won’t just accept the status quo. These are the sparks that turn competent professionals into relentless system-fixers, change accelerators, and bureaucracy hackers.

I’ll start with mine.

I joined the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard as a civilian nuclear engineer in August 2001. Like many others, I assumed I was stepping into a nice, stable, post-Cold War shipyard where the biggest challenges would be technical and predictable. Six weeks later, September 11th happened and everything changed. I watched the shipyard—as an organization and the people in it—struggle to deal with the sudden, intense rate of change and deliver the transformational results the nation needed. That experience pivoted my entire career.

I moved from “just an engineer” to a system troubleshooter, change accelerator, and bureaucracy-hacking entrepreneur. It’s the reason I founded Engine-for-Change and why I write, teach, and coach people to make organizations work better. When you need business imperative, transformational results, you need more change agents.

Captain Bradley’s origin story.

One of the most important influences on that path has been my mentor, retired Navy Captain Joseph Bradley. I dedicated my second book, Change Tactics, to him because his own origin story so perfectly captures the decision point so many of us face. Here is his story, in his own words:

It was about 1983. I was a young officer on a submarine in the US Navy. One afternoon, I joined several fellow Junior Officers (JOs) that were sitting in the wardroom, mostly bellyaching about some idiot decision or policy. Several said something like “Well, when I am a Captain, life will be different, until then we just have to live with it.”

And in a flash, I burst out with “You won’t be able to, as you will have 20 years living with crap.”, followed by “We have to change now, and develop the ability change things…”

My fellow JOs thought I was nuts, bound for trouble. But that conversation crystallized one of my life goals – be able to change organizations, systems policies in a way that makes things better, while not introducing new evils…

That one insight, followed by a goal and then plans to learn how, taking the effort to get off my butt and trying things and being able to assess results and then do it all over again has led to more than 40 years of successive change agent roles.

Captain Bradley’s flash of insight in that submarine wardroom—and my own awakening in the shipyard after 9/11—share a common thread: the moment we stop waiting for permission or position and decide to build the ability to change things now.

These origin stories matter because they remind us that change agents aren’t born knowing how to do this work. We’re forged in specific moments of frustration, clarity, or necessity. The difference is what we do with that moment: turn it into a deliberate goal, then into repeated action, learning, and iteration. And you don’t have to walk that journey alone. You have Engine-for-Change ready to support you along your journey.

Now it’s your turn.

Take a few minutes this week to reflect on your origin story. When was the moment you stepped out of the default “just live with it” mindset and decided to develop the ability to change systems, policies, or organizations for the better? What triggered it? What did you do next? How has that decision shaped the work you do today?

I’d love to hear your stories.  The best ones may be featured in a future issue of Bureaucracy Hacker so we can all learn from each other’s sparks.

Here’s to turning our origin stories into ongoing engines for change.