Change is inevitable. This phrase is one of the most overused, overquoted cliches of modern times. Even more inevitably, closely followed by the Greek Philosopher Heraclitus's quote: "The only thing that is constant is change." Yet, quotes and phrases become cliches for genuine reasons: that they reflect the lived experience of the majority. This reason is valid for the inescapable reality of change in our lives. Individuals cannot avoid changing situations because our organisations, societies, and world are constantly evolving and adapting. The perpetual nature of change is why we believe building capability and capacity to adapt is now a critical priority for organisations.
So let’s explore why so many change initiatives tend to fail, and share why organisational leaders need to shift their mindsets from an outdated view that change only happens because they decide to implement it and instead embrace a broader perspective on change and adaptation.
This shift in focus enables leaders to adopt more inclusive, participatory forms of change leadership, resulting in more significant innovation and extreme levels of stakeholder alignment. To make this approach work successfully, we must encourage experimentation and reframe how we see failure in organisations to build greater psychological safety and willingness to fail fast, learn and adapt.
Changing how we think about change
The practice and professionalisation of managing and leading change in organisations have evolved as our knowledge has matured and developed over the last 70 years.
Kurt Lewin began researching change more singularly during the 1950s, first exploring the restraining and enabling forces driving change before popularising his three-stage change model: unfreezing (shifting out of the current state), changing into a new form, and then refreezing into the stable new condition. His thinking helped give us a way to conceptualise what happened during change, particularly at a time when the world of work was significantly more straightforward and more stable.
At this time, we were between the second and third industrial revolutions: computer science was in its infancy. We were yet to experience the explosive impact of technology on how we work. Many used Lewin's three-stage model as 'the' approach to change until Harvard Business School Professor, John Kotter, published his 1995 book, "Leading Change.“ Widely recognised as a change management guru, Kotter's book introduced an eight-stage change process that integrated the psychological aspects of people and change into how leaders approached engaging their teams with change. From creating urgency and guiding coalitions, he promoted celebrating short-term wins and consolidating changes to realise change outcomes.
In the years that followed, widespread adoption of his thinking sat alongside increased levels of formalisation and process so that organisations began to create formal change management roles, teams, and functions to oversee and manage the increased levels of bureaucracy that came with change implementation.
We believe there are several significant flaws within this line of thinking.
Firstly, Lewin's three-stage model and Kotter's later eight-stage build both assume that change is a project or programme of work with a clearly-defined beginning, middle, and end. We do not see change in the same linear way. At a different time, working under different operational paradigms where business tended to be more stable and less unpredictable, the linear approach might have been practical. But, in today's working environment, even the simplest of changes require a long tail of further integration, adoption, and improvement.
Secondly, much of this thinking assumes that change ONLY happens when led from the top and cascaded through the organisation. This singular view on the impetus for change – what we call 'monocentric' change – is fundamentally flawed and results in narrow perspectives and understanding of change reality. Here we see the leaders as drivers of change, much like an ego-driven view of the 'hero' leader; the success of how the organisational system pulls through and adapts to the change is primarily down to leaders' input. Yet, this frame of thinking paints everyone else in the organisation as passive, with no agency or choice. The culture in many organisations does indeed lead people to feel they have little agency, often resulting in people leaving the business rather than staying to contribute. But that is agency.
Where change truly occurs
Instead of this monocentric view of change, we believe that change happens from within through polycentric change. Change occurs through the informal conversations people have at the start of a meeting, or the water cooler, or via instant messenger on their phones.
Therefore, to effectively drive change, instead of focusing purely on the formal, 'top-down' methods, we need to create highly participative approaches that open up dialogue, tap into networks, and enable conversational change. This is why the first stage in the Semco Style Roadmap is 'brave leadership.' Brave, because it takes a courageous leader to be willing to give up so much of their 'formal power' and invite their organisation to shape and influence what the future might look like.
Thirdly, prior thinking on change appears to oversimplify the systemic nature of change. It is impossible to unfreeze,change, and refreeze something unless it sits within a vacuum. In her book, 'Thinking in Systems,' Donella Meadows encourages us to challenge our thinking around where we "boundary the system." If we narrow our focus too much to change just one part of a broader system without anticipating the potential consequences of change on other interdependencies, we can initiate a seismic chain reaction and only become aware of it during the aftershock. The reality is that changes within a process or in one part of an organisation undoubtedly have knock-on effects in the broader system. We cannot always accurately anticipate wider systemic changes. The complexity of our work means we cannot consider every factor or impact. However, that should not prevent us from attempting to explore and anticipate these broader, systemic changes. Our approach is to encourage widespread participation and engagement in potential change. This increased participation requires significantly greater transparency and openness around change intention, focusing more on how leaders communicate and engage others in possible changes so that everyone can explore potential system impact.
Change is not predictable
Finally, linear models of changing an element from state 'A' to state 'B' relies heavily on the assumption that we can predict outcomes accurately and control for variation. Prediction works effectively in stable environments, where we can model behaviour on prior activity. Much of our scientific world seeks to establish predictive models that we can rely on to identify possible future actions and outcomes. Yet, there is no perfectly accurate predictive model for change.
We can simulate how weather patterns might emerge, though these are based on mathematical models of atmosphere and oceans to predict likely weather fronts. We can use mathematical models to explore how a tumour might grow, though additional contextual factors can result in very different outcomes. We can use psychometric tools to measure leadership traits and styles, though the resulting behaviours will adapt based on the context or environment.
When working with people, teams, and organisations to make significant, systemic changes, there are so many variables to consider that we need to adopt experimentation and iteration. Within the Semco Style Roadmap, a critical early stage of evolution is creating pilots and experimentation.
Carving a new path with Semco Style
If we accept that linear change processes and paths are outdated, we can explore further to embrace alternative ideas that enable better levels of adaptation. When thinking about organisations and workflows linearly, we reduce the system to little more than machines.
Machinistic approaches result in leaders trying to use levers to drive improved performance outcomes. This is like a mechanic tinkering with a car engine to achieve more speed and output. If anything goes wrong, we seek out the problem and fix it. The 'machine' view is just one of the organisational metaphors that Gareth Morgan outlines in his book, 'Images of Organisation.' Yet, a number of the other organisational metaphors embrace a far more organic language around growth and regeneration:
💡An 'organism' with a collective response to its environment
💡A 'brain' intent on learning and adapting over time
💡'Flux and transformation,' an everchanging system indivisible from its environment
These descriptors of how we can think of organisations open up a new world for how we think about change.
The Semco Style Institute has developed a comprehensive and ever increasing range of practices that teams and organisations can begin to experiment with in a non-prescriptive and non-dogmatic way. Based on the early experiments and ideas of Ricardo Semler, these practices and ideas have been used, adapted, and codified to stimulate and inspire others to experiment. We do not dictate a 'single way'; instead, we invite you to explore different ideas and develop your own style of change.
At the heart of our framework are three core beliefs: a belief in democracy, ensuring participation, inclusion, and buy-in; common-sense, ensuring that approaches reduce complex and unnecessary layers of bureaucracy; and aligned self-interest, which includes the needs, interests, and engagement of all people. Based on these beliefs, we invite leaders to approach change role modelling these beliefs in an inclusive and participative way.
Beyond these core beliefs, we embrace five principles, 15 pillars, and over 100 practices that support leaders and teams in finding new ways to work, engage, and innovate. Removing unnecessary secrecy and bringing outside-in perspectives enables organisations to co-create and co-design innovations and ideas. Each practice can begin as a small pilot within one part of the organisation to experiment with how it works in that context and identify key learnings that can be shared, if valuable, with the broader organisation. Testing for effectiveness, evaluating the impact, and learning become core capabilities in how change happens and grows from within the organisation.
A final thought
In conclusion, there are many different ways that organisations can change to stay competitive and meet the demands of an ever-evolving environment. By embracing a more inclusive approach to change, encouraging participation, exploring innovations, and using extreme stakeholder alignment, businesses can create dynamic work environments where people can thrive, adapt, and grow.
Constant learning and evolution become the cornerstones of regeneration and adaptation.
Would you like to learn more about developing your own Semco Style? Speak to our team for further information.
