- Leandro Herrero - https://leandroherrero.com -

After change you need a period of stability and consolidation’, a last Century employee said.

After the third reorganisation and the fourth quality programme and the second change management initiative, the cry is loud: give us a break! Yes, stability would be nice. But the last time we had stability was around 1756 (give or take a 100 years). The current world is instable and unpredictable. The business environment is a chaotic moving target. You have to be very careful about the word ‘stability’.

Although the linguistics are logical, we must accept that real consolidation and real stability are not going to be a sort of ‘steady-state’. Many people in managerial ranks spend their life in rehearsal mode: I’ll do this when I have more people, when my headcount is full, when I’m given a new budget, etc. But in the meantime: things happen! If you wait for stability, you may be waiting for the impossible.

It is true however that a tsunami of corporate initiatives competing on how many people are flooded, is not a good way to lead the organization. In that sense, people asking for ‘stability’ are in fact saying, we are tired of all that stuff. And they are right. The trouble with the tsunami is that probably it contains both good waves and bad waves. All gets flooded. In information terms there is no signal and noise anymore. Anything looks like signal and noise at the same time.

The Viral Change Mobilizing Platform [1]provides a mechanism for a continuum between changes (from tipping points) and establishment of new behaviours as a routine. It also gives us the power of internal (viral) networks and their perception of ‘stability’ or ‘change’. It is legitimate to place borders and timelines on processes, but they are only useful as part of a code language. It is only when ‘destination’ is absolutely fixed and unmovable that ‘the end of the change process’ makes sense. If you have reached X, well, that’s it! But if vision is more of a journey with the possibility of new discoveries, then when exactly would you be able to say that you have reached terra firma?

Viral Change TM forces you to see waves of change, more than a sequential journey from A à B à C. It is change-ability, not change. It is a Mobilizing Platform installed, not a method used. Your concept of stability or consolidation may never be the same!

Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans. Change and instability is what happens to organizations when they are making plans for change. If you get a break, it will be permanent.