Adriano Pianesi is an executive coach, leadership educator, and organizational change expert who has spent more than 20 years helping leaders and teams turn vision into action. The founder of ParticipAction Consulting and an adjunct faculty member at Johns Hopkins University’s Carey Business School, Adriano is best known for equipping managers and executives to lead transformation—especially when they lack formal authority.
He is the creator of The Changemaker Atlas and the Manager to Changemaker framework, practical tools that help middle managers navigate complexity, build trust, and make measurable progress in their organizations. His facilitation approach blends adaptive leadership, systems thinking, and Liberating Structures, creating sessions that are as energizing as they are productive.
Adriano has coached and designed leadership programs for clients including Bloomberg Philanthropies, Johns Hopkins Medicine, the U.S. Marine Corps, and VIAVI. His work has been featured in Reworked, CMSWire, and Johns Hopkins publications, and he is a frequent speaker at international leadership and workplace transformation events.
Originally from Rome, Italy, Adriano brings a global perspective and a distinctly human approach to leadership—anchored in humor, curiosity, and courage. He lives in Washington, D.C., where he divides his time between coaching, writing, and exploring leadership as both an art and a daily practice.
He describes himself as a “leadership anthropologist”—a lifelong observer of how people find courage, creativity, and connection inside complex systems.
2 topics · no fee, no honorarium, no mileage
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The Changemaker Atlas is a practical and visual framework for anyone who wants to make meaningful progress inside complex organizations—without waiting for permission or perfect conditions.
Developed by Adriano Pianesi, this field guide reimagines organizational life as a landscape to be explored rather than a system to be controlled. It helps leaders, managers, and teams map where they stand, identify what’s holding them back, and chart a realistic route toward impact.
The Atlas introduces four territories every changemaker must traverse:
- Islands of Preparation – where clarity, purpose, and readiness are built.
- The Province of Compelling Leadership – where influence is earned through trust, not title.
- The Land of Engaging People – where collaboration, energy, and dialogue take root.
- The Territory of Measurable Results – where small wins become visible progress.
Through stories, tools, and reflection exercises, The Changemaker Atlas teaches readers how to navigate organizational politics, surface hidden resistance, and lead from the middle. It combines the science of adaptive leadership with the art of facilitation and the mindset of a traveler—curious, observant, and ready to learn from the terrain.
Whether you’re a team lead, project manager, or executive, this guide offers a map to turn everyday work into a journey of influence, growth, and contribution.
Most managers are asked to deliver transformation—but without the authority, clarity, or control to make it happen. From Manager to Changemaker is a practical leadership experience designed to help them do exactly that.
Developed and led by Adriano Pianesi, this program equips mid-level and emerging leaders with the mindset and tools to create impact from wherever they stand. Drawing on principles of adaptive leadership, Liberating Structures, and systems thinking, participants learn how to mobilize people, build trust, and move real work forward—without waiting for top-down approval.
The program reframes leadership as an act of exploration rather than command. Through interactive workshops, peer coaching, and field-based experiments, managers learn how to:
- Diagnose what’s really blocking progress in their teams or organizations.
- Build influence across silos and engage stakeholders with different priorities.
- Design small, low-risk experiments that demonstrate results and build credibility.
- Shift from managing tasks to mobilizing energy—turning frustration into forward motion.
Each participant leaves with a personalized 30-day action plan, ready to test in their own workplace, and a community of peers committed to supporting one another’s experiments.
Whether you lead a team of five or influence a network of hundreds, From Manager to Changemaker offers a proven path to lead with courage, clarity, and creativity—even when you’re not in charge.
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