the way we change is changing

Over the last 20-odd years, the dominant approach to managing change in organisations has been a structured process that had a clear start, a transition period and an endpoint. John Kotter’s Leading Change, and his eight-step change process, has been one of the most influential works in this field. It starts with 1: Establishing a Sense of Urgency, then six steps of transition, and ends with 8: Anchoring New Approaches in the Culture.

It reminded me of a metaphor from Dr. Abraham Twerski, in which he describes how lobsters grow. A lobster is a soft animal that lives inside of a rigid shell, which doesn’t expand. As it grows, it gets increasingly uncomfortable in the confines of its shell. So, when the lobster is at that point of discomfort, it hides in a cave, casts off its shell and produces a new one. Discomfort – transition – new shell.

But what if change does not need to happen in such a big transformative step? What if the lobster’s shell was more like fish scales, where growth could happen by continuously growing and replacing old scales with new ones? From an evolutionary perspective, perhaps a more agile scaly lobster would be better placed for survival, or at least not have to hide in a cave during that vulnerable transition period.

Aaron Dignan argues that that adaptive organisations transform through a process he calls “continuous participatory change.” Rather than a structured transformation process, change is a way of life. It requires organisations to let go of bureaucratic ways and create safe spaces for experimentation that allow people to think and work differently. It is people at the frontline experimenting and transforming small parts of the system. Things that are found to work can be used by other parts of the business, and similarly, other parts of the business are able to learn from the mistakes of others.

That doesn’t mean that large scale change is not important, but it is a lot easier to scale something that has been validated and improved by people who use it daily. And with lots of tiny little successes and failures that happen every day, our scaled lobster continues to evolve and grow without needing to go into hiding or risk its survival.