What is more critical for a successful business transformation, being a change or an adaptive leader?

The balance point between certainty and uncertainty, stability and instability, complexity and simplicity is moving faster and more often that it has ever done previously. 

Coupled with the increasing incidence of ‘Black Swans Events’, those improbable and unexpected events that provide extreme impact and result in unprecedented consequences, have created the conditions for us to re-examine the way we, as organizational development consultants  approach business transformation and change.

Change Programs Don’t Work!

My thirty years of corporate consulting experiences has led me to believe that organizations and cultures don’t really change, not because they don’t want to, it’s because they usually can’t! Too often I have seen CEO’s and OD consultants suggest that there is something ‘wrong’ about their organizational culture, and then embark on a costly, complex, culture change program, that attempts to ‘fix’ it! The result is often a mixture of frustration, denial and blame, usually around the timing, the change programs’ focus, structure or implementation, or ‘wrong’ consulting advice or even the ‘wrong’ consultant!

Working with 'what is' and 'what could be'!

The first step is to work towards deciphering the current organisational culture, through simple, accessible and focussed dialogue processes, rather than complex, prescriptive, tools based processes that are consultant dependent. This approach engages and involves the people, who work in the organisation, and understand it in all of its manifestations and possibilities. By doing this we have made a positive first step towards understanding, at a very deep level,  ‘what is’ as well as ‘what could be’.

What you resist persists!

We can then assess what key factors drive the culture, and then, again through simple and focussed dialogue processes, that involve the people, determine how to stimulate and unleash more of the possibilities and positive energy and reduce more of the negatives. Rather than focus on solving business issues and problems, the real work gets done when determining what the real adaptive challenges are and developing Innovative new ways of solving these problems.

Adapting and evolving is not changing!  

Nature has taught us that Disruption can be both destructive and creative, and that, without it, nature’s eco-systems do not adapt, and reach new thresholds.  Once we understand that an organisation is also an inherent eco-system, that also requires adaptation, then we can create the ‘safe space’ to create Intentional Disruptions.

This stimulates the adaptive process and, if well led, can enable the organisation and its people to become passionate about solving its problems in surprising, imaginative and innovative ways.

What can you do to be a more adaptive leader and ensure that business transformation initiatives that you are involved with, deliver what they promise?