Change is not the problem
The problem is that we treat change as a problem.
Change is not the problem
The problem is that we treat change as a problem.
Virtually every organization I have guided over twenty years began the conversation with the same sentence: "We are in a change process." As if change were a temporary state you pass through to return to stability. Ronald Heifetz distinguishes in Leadership Without Easy Answers between technical and adaptive problems. Technical problems have known solutions; you just need to apply them. Adaptive problems require people to change their beliefs, habits and expectations. Most organizational problems are adaptive. Most organizations treat them as technical.
The result is an endless cycle of change programs that do not work. Not because the analysis is wrong, but because the intervention targets the wrong level. You can redesign processes, adjust structures, implement systems, but if the underlying behavior does not change, the old pattern returns as soon as the program ends. Edgar Schein describes how organizational culture operates on three levels: visible artifacts, espoused values and unconscious basic assumptions. Change programs rarely reach deeper than the second level. The third level, where the actual resistance resides, remains untouched.
The shift begins with accepting that change is not the problem but the condition. Organizations operate in an environment that permanently shifts. The question is not how you manage the change but how you build an organization that treats change as normal rather than exceptional.
That sounds abstract but it is not. Concretely, it means: stop reorganizing as a reflexive response to pressure. Stop labeling "change trajectories" as if they have a beginning and an end. Start developing the capacity to read what is happening, to act quickly on limited information, and to make mistakes without the system seizing up.
The organizations that function best are not the ones that make the best plans. They are the ones that learn fastest. That is a fundamentally different organizational principle, and it requires a fundamentally different conception of leadership.
Sources: Ronald Heifetz, Leadership Without Easy Answers (Harvard University Press, 1994); Edgar Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 5th edition, 2010).
Source: Ronald Heifetz, Leadership Without Easy Answers (Harvard University Press, 1994); Edgar Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2010)