Transformation you say? Not all changes are created equal!

The terms evolution, modernization, and transformation are often used interchangeably, although instinctively we perceive a difference.

▶️ I contributed to a vast mobilizing project in the 1990s that involved several large companies, experts and academic partners. At the dawn of the emergence of the change management discipline, we had to delve deep into the subject.

Since then, through a multitude of missions helping businesses successfully achieve their projects, I had the opportunity to confirm our main finding about change.

📌 The majority of the changes we experience are about sustaining continuity.

They are operational, utilitarian, mechanical, localized, simpler, short-term changes. Some ensure day-to-day performance, others long-term sustainability, but they all aim to sustain continuity.

However, in terms of magnitude of change, there is one extreme that is embedded in discontinuity and stands out from all the others:

✳️ Disrupting change (radical).

📌 Disruptive change has been a less common phenomenon, so it is less familiar to most.

Disruptive change is found in innovation, transformation and metamorphosis. It necessarily implies a strong discontinuity with the existing. Once the transformation is completed, we hardly recognize what was before.

Disruptive change is strategic, fundamental, multidisciplinary, complex and can only be achieved over the long term. Its process is fundamentally different from that of incremental change. The conditions for success are also very different. It is radical, risky, complex and turbulent, but without disruption there is no real transformation. Just think of music CD sales companies facing the emergence of internet streaming services.

📌 So, when popular discourse talks about digital transformation, what type of change are we talking about?

Very often, we talk about modernization. We aim to preserve existing processes and ways of doing things with new technologies. We basically keep the same body, we eliminate the obsolete, but with new clothes and accessories. Even if we add artificial organs, we are still about continuity.

If your organization has been operating on the same principles forever and you’re considering a digital transformation, do you think you can take full advantage of the potential of new technologies without first reinventing yourself?

If you really want to take advantage of the full potential of digital technology, you will have to accept the risk of creating a rupture with the past and rethink your organizational dynamic.

Soon I’ll explain how to bring about disruptive change in a mature organization, with references behind it.

Until then!

 

Eric Magnan, Pragmatik Advisory Services Inc, 2022