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Their Challenge

The Port of Portland had traditionally been organized by business unit and the executive team found that departments were siloed.

The executive team reorganized the Port of Portland around function to support cross-sectional teams, yet the outcome was conflict, lack of clarity of roles and responsibilities, and organizational.

Our Approach

In 2012, we assisted them in implementing the Project Management Office (PMO), a project the Port of Portland had spent months on with little to show for it.  We created a 90-day change leadership project jointly with a cross-sectional team of Port of Portland managers, coaching them in real-time and working together to create appropriate governance through 2013.

After the Port of Portland reorganization, we were asked to assist at a larger scale. To improve team performance, we worked with departments to identify accountabilities and define cross-boundary collaboration needs and expectations. We also utilized coaching for executives and managers focusing on quality of listening and dealing with inevitable breakdowns through Connected Leadership training.

The Impact

  • Executives reflected that “we’re so much better than we ever were” and that Port of Portland is “much less silo-ed.”
  • Senior leaders requested that we design and facilitate three years of Executive Team offsites.
  • Following our first engagement with them, the executive team has sent two senior leaders each year to our 9-month immersive CII program.
  • As Port of Portland continues to evolve, we returned to partner with them in 2021 to organize around a new mission and vision of shared prosperity.

We’re so much better than we ever were

Picture of port of Portland logo

– Port of Portland

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between change leadership and change management?
Change management focuses on the processes, systems, and logistics of implementing organizational change, timelines, communications plans, and project governance. Change leadership addresses the human dimension: how leaders model change, build trust, generate commitment, and sustain momentum when resistance emerges. While change management asks ‘what needs to happen,’ change leadership asks ‘who needs to think and behave differently, and how do leaders create that shift?’ Both are necessary, but leadership behavior determines whether managed change actually takes hold.
Most change initiatives fail because they are managed as projects rather than led as human experiences. Organizations invest in communications and training but underestimate the behavioral and cultural shifts required of leaders themselves. Change fails when senior leaders do not visibly embody the shift, when employees lack clarity on their role in it, and when conflict is avoided rather than resolved. Effective change leadership requires leaders to build trust, model new behaviors, and create real accountability for cross-boundary collaboration, before restructuring begins.
Conversation is the primary mechanism through which change is led. Communications plans inform, they do not generate commitment. Leaders who hold high-stakes conversations, surface resistance without defensiveness, and co-create solutions with their teams build the trust that makes change sustainable. Conversant’s work with the Port of Portland demonstrates this directly: coaching managers in real-time on the quality of their listening and cross-boundary dialogue produced governance and alignment that months of structured project planning had failed to deliver.
Trust is built during change through consistency between what leaders say and what they do, transparency about the reasons behind decisions, and genuine space for employees to voice concerns. People engage with change more readily when they see their input shape the outcome, not just their compliance being managed. Involving cross-functional teams in designing the change process converts potential resistors into active contributors, dramatically accelerating adoption. Conversant’s 90-day Port of Portland engagement used this approach to achieve cross-boundary governance that had eluded months of internal project work.
A human-centered approach to change leadership begins with listening, understanding the purposes, concerns, and circumstances of those most affected before designing any intervention. It treats change as something that happens with people, not to them. In practice, this means involving employees in shaping the change process, coaching leaders on how to hold difficult conversations, building clarity about roles and accountabilities, and measuring progress through relationship and cultural indicators alongside project milestones. Conversant’s change leadership practice is grounded entirely in this approach.