With over 20 years of experience leading complex change initiatives across financial services, retail, government, and more, Mark Green has seen the best—and worst—of organisational transformation. In 2023, following recovery from a serious illness, he founded Change Rebellion, a consultancy on a mission to humanise and simplify how change is done.
In this interview, Mark shares insights into the models driving Change Rebellion’s success and explains why the future of transformation lies in putting people, not process, at the centre.
You spent decades leading transformation in large businesses until a near-death experience inspired you to start your own consultancy. Can you explain what happened?
After spending years in the same career, those quiet “what if” questions often linger in the background.
What if I stepped out on my own?
What if I challenged the status quo?
What if I dared to believe there was a better way to do things—even if it meant going up against the biggest players in the industry?
In January 2021, life forced me to confront those questions more directly than I could have imagined. I contracted the Delta variant of COVID-19 along with my family. My body went into what’s known as a cytokine storm—a brutal immune response where the body attacks itself in an effort to destroy the virus. I couldn’t be cured. I was placed into an induced coma, and for two months, I remained there—surviving multiple near-death events. Remarkably, I woke up.
After another two months in rehab, I began to recover—something many believed I wouldn’t be capable of. By all medical expectations, I should not be here. Or, at the very least, not here in the way that I am: speaking, working, living, and thinking clearly.
That experience changed everything. The “what ifs” that once felt overwhelming, even intimidating, no longer hold power over me. When you’ve faced mortality, fear loses its grip. Life becomes too short, too precious, to leave those questions unanswered.
So I chose to start answering them.
How did your recovery reshape your outlook on leadership and the way you now work with clients and teams?
My recovery impacted so many things about my outlook on leadership, firstly it made me realise how one key ingredient demonstrated by leadership was more powerful and more inspiring than we could every realise and that was projecting hope.
Yes, hope in all it’s unimaginable glory can make a difference so profound in a persons life.
Also communication can never be undervalued. Having lost the ability to talk and move for some time, I understood their true value. So combine those two hugely important factors and you’re moving towards the direction of success.
Many organisations focus heavily on technology or strategy during transformations. Why do you believe people and culture should take priority in change management?
Can you share real examples where this focus has either made or broken a transformation? I’ve seen firsthand that strategy and technology may define the direction, but people and culture ultimately determine the success or failure of change.
You can have the most cutting-edge tech stack or the most robust strategy blueprint, but if the people within the organisation don’t understand it, don’t trust it, or don’t feel engaged with it, progress stalls. Culture is the invisible architecture of any organisation, and ignoring it is like building on sand.
One example that comes to mind is a national-scale transformation I was part of in the health sector. The programme involved significant digital upgrades and process redesigns that, on paper, promised improved efficiency and outcomes. But early on, it became clear that the people impacted weren’t brought along the journey. There was cultural resistance, fear of job loss, and a growing divide between leadership’s vision and frontline reality.
The turning point came when we shifted focus—engaging clinical and operational leaders, embedding behavioural change expertise, and fostering ownership at local levels. It wasn’t quick, but once the human element was prioritised, momentum built, and the outcomes became sustainable. The organisation is now one of the highest performers in its sector.
Conversely, I was involved in an earlier programme in the financial services space where leadership was fixated on tech deployment. Culture and people engagement were treated as afterthoughts. Despite huge investment and a watertight roadmap, the lack of trust, transparency, and behavioural alignment led to adoption issues, attrition, and an eventual re-scope of the entire programme. Strategy didn’t fail; alignment did.
In short, people and culture aren’t the soft stuff. They’re the hard reality of whether transformation lands or fails.
How do you measure success when it comes to cultural transformation, especially when ROI isn’t immediately financial?
Cultural transformation success is measured less by immediate financial return and more by sustained behavioural and organisational shifts. While it can be tempting to default to traditional KPIs, the real indicators of progress are often qualitative, longitudinal, and behavioural.
At its core, successful cultural change shows up in how people act when no one is watching. It’s visible in decision-making processes, collaboration patterns, leadership behaviours, and the way values are lived day-to-day. I look for shifts in language, in confidence, in the ownership people take—not just of their roles, but of the organisation’s direction.
You also see success in the subtle but powerful indicators: lower resistance to change, higher engagement with initiatives, more consistent alignment between strategy and behaviours, and psychological safety becoming part of how the business operates not just a concept on a slide.
Measurement, in this context, means blending sentiment and data: pulse surveys, stakeholder interviews, behavioural observations, and the increasing alignment between what leaders say and what they do. When people start asking better questions, solving problems differently, and influencing others in new ways, that’s when you know the culture has shifted.
Financial ROI often follows, but the first signs of true value lie in mindset, trust, and momentum. Cultural transformation is a long game and the smartest organisations understand that impact starts with people, not percentages.
How do you personally stay resilient and energised while helping others navigate intense periods of change?
Well, aside from a strict regime of caffeine, mild sarcasm, and pretending I have it all together, the truth is, resilience isn’t something you just have. It’s something you build (usually the hard way).
In my line of work, I’ve learned that staying resilient doesn’t mean being unaffected by change—it means being able to hold space for it, even when it’s uncomfortable, ambiguous, or downright exhausting. For me, that comes from being deeply connected to purpose. When I see that the work we’re doing is having a real impact on people, even in small ways, it fuels me.
I also protect my own clarity, whether that’s through reflection, finding humour in the chaos, or making sure I have the right people around me who can challenge, support and ground me. You can’t pour from an empty cup, so I make time to recharge properly, mentally and emotionally. Sometimes that looks like a walk, and sometimes it looks like escapism in the movies.
It’s the people I work with that energise me. Seeing teams evolve, leaders grow, and cultures shift that’s what keeps me going. That, and lots and lots of cups of tea.
What advice would you give to other professionals considering launching their own venture later in life or following a life-changing experience?
Scratch that itch.
SLife-changing experiences have a funny way of stripping away the noise and making the important things clearer. Use that clarity.
The key is to know your ‘why’ and build from there. Surround yourself with people who are both believers and challengers. Stay curious, stay humble, and don’t be afraid to do things your way — especially if your way challenges an industry that needs shaking up. The risk doesn’t disappear, but your ability to handle it is better than ever. And if you’ve come through something life-altering, you already know that fear is rarely the thing that should be making your decisions. Start smart. But start.
What are your future plans for Change Rebellion over the next five years?
World domination was never on the cards. I didn’t set out to build an empire.
I set out to build a small, sharp, boutique-style service that delivered change differently with heart, with humanity, and with a healthy amount of honesty.
The ambition for Change Rebellion has always been to create a space where seasoned change professionals feel seen, where their value isn’t reduced to a post-it note in a steering committee, and where clients finally get a different kind of partner: one who understands that transformation is about people first, and PowerPoint last.
Over the next five years, we’ll continue growing sustainably, partnering with the right clients, not just the biggest ones. We want to remain selective, staying true to what we believe in while developing new services and ideas that challenge how change is traditionally delivered.
Most importantly, we’ll keep being a voice for those in the industry who haven’t always felt heard, the ones who’ve done the graft behind the scenes, carried the emotional load of transformation, and still turned up smiling.
If we do that well, I believe Change Rebellion will continue to grow as a name people know, recognise, and turn to when they want change that actually works because it’s thoughtful, human, and unapologetically different.
