Member Spotlight, Shunkoh (Rie Ray) Takagi

Shunkoh (Rie Ray) Takagi

TallTree Change Consulting LLC, Owner, Principal Consultant

Fun Fact

I have recently been ordained as a novice (entry-level) monk at Seattle Koyasan Buddhist Temple. It has been my lifelong passion and pursuit to learn about and practice Buddhist philosophy, so I feel extremely fortunate that I was able to find my Dharma master who would take me as his disciple right here in Seattle. The temple is now going through a transformation – from a small, ethnically supposed temple to a dynamic and global community based on Buddhist philosophy to make the world more compassionate place. I am happy to be able to be part of this transformation, leveraging the skills I’ve accumulated over many years.

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Background

I was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. I have a B.A. in international relations and an MBA from universities in Tokyo. I was 19 when I first got on an airplane to study in Spain. I also studied counselling psychology at the graduate level at a university in Canada. Currently I’m taking graduate level correspondence courses in Esoteric Buddhist studies at Koyasan University.

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Path to Change Management

During my 22+ years at Microsoft (12 years in Japan, 10 years in the U.S.), I played different roles at different levels in various internal transformation projects, ranging from simple process improvements to larger scale IT projects to organizational transformations impacting tens of thousands of people. While I was supporting some top executives as their business managers, I became fascinated by the impact they and their leadership teams have on the successful outcome of transformational projects. I had been a reasonably-effective project and business manager, so I was getting solutions delivered on time – but realized that without effective leadership, people tended to suffer, being drowned in milliards of changes happening at the same time in their workplace. Success depended on how effectively we were able to support front line folks make changes with the least amount of pain and the executives and Sr. leaders had the key to that success, as well as the people managers. After I left Microsoft, I founded my own change management consulting company to continue to support leaders become more effective in sponsoring and managing changes of all sizes and kinds.

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Biggest Obstacle Getting Established in Change Management

As an independent consultant it was difficult to gain trust from internal folks beyond my direct client. I found it useful to always be extra intentional to clarify my role as a change consultant is to ensure their success. I try in my engagements to engage with change leaders at different levels and understand their perspectives about what and why of the change at hand and what they thought needed to happen for the change to be successful. Follow-up communications were also key to maintaining accountability.

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Biggest Reward from this Career

I am also a certified trainer for Prosci change management and I just love enabling folks in my class to become awesome change leaders.

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Bucket List Yet to Accomplish

Continue to further my Buddhist training and studies to be a fully-ordained monk so I can be a better help to those who suffer because they are unable to change whatever they need to change... really, the more I study, the more I find the potential of Buddhist philosophy and practices be the catalyst to address the most prevalent modern world issues like loneliness and anxiety.