How can we excel at transformation?
An extract from Change-maker’s Handbook, to be published in 2023.
by Elena Bondareva
Over the years, I have been sought out to do for change initiatives what Dr. Gregory House (played on the series House by Hugh Laurie) does for obscure medical conditions: diagnose. For two decades of research and practice, I have been interrogating why transformation fails.
Wherever we look, we need urgent wholesale transformational change towards a future where all can thrive in harmony with our planet. And yet, while there many (a) qualified people (b) in positions of power with (c) the right intentions, (d) accurate problem definitions, and (e) promising solutions, planning for and executing transformational change still seems haphazard, with outcomes largely left to chance.
The unsurprising result: 70%+ of all transformational initiatives fail*, jading their objects and bruising the leaders who put their necks on the line. In failing to support change-makers in their vital work, we are burning – sometimes irrevocably – through our most precious resource.
While transformational change is both inevitable and necessary, our sophistication about it has not even uniformly reached the trial-and-error stage. Nobody seems focused on demystifying transformation change to the degree achieved with most natural sciences and even many social sciences.
By chancing transformational change to this extent, we miss an opportunity to consistently enable the outcomes sought while retaining, developing, and rewarding our top change talent.
In my observation, transformation fails so much more frequently than it succeeds because:
1. We don’t distinguish transformation from other types of change
2. We don’t put the right people at the helm
3. We don’t design change
4. We overlook process change
5. We don’t have formulas for transformational change
6. We don’t equip change-makers because we don’t see change-making as a discipline
Let’s examine each of these in more detail, reframing it to reverse the odds.
1. Distinguish transformation from other types of change
The biggest reason transformational initiatives fail is that we don’t differentiate transformation from incremental change, otherwise known as continual improvement.
The difference between incremental and transformational change is similar to that between efficiency and effectiveness. If efficiency is about getting to the intended result with the least waste of time, effort, and resources, then effectiveness is about getting the best possible outcome. If efficiency is about doing it right, effectiveness is about doing the right thing. In pursuit of a plausible vision, transformation throws today’s system up in the air to see how it lands.
If continual improvement addresses animal cruelty by switching to organic hamburgers, transformation considers a vegan diet. If continual improvement looks for water efficient irrigation technologies, transformation tries to eliminate irrigation altogether. If continual improvement looks to improve staff productivity by 5%, transformation considers automating repetitive tasks to free the staff for creative ones.
Incremental change fine-tunes the system while transformation recasts it, fundamentally changing the rules, structures, systems, skills, and processes. Both are essential for progress, and we have done ourselves an immense disfavor by failing to differentiate the two and to perfect each. Before being cleared for major surgery, you may be required to bring your sugar levels down or let your recent tooth extraction heal. Imagine if going in for a medical procedure, you did not know if it were minor (you’d be home for lunch) or major (requiring 2-3 nights in hospital). We would find that disorienting enough to be unacceptable, which is why I advocate for transformation to be acknowledged as a major change in the sea of minor ones, to be planned differently than incremental change and by a different group of people.
2. Put the right people at the helm
While both are qualified to guide you through an unpleasant experience, you would not expect your dental hygienist to do your implant. So why do we expect the teams charged with fine-tuning the status quo – HR, IT, Legal, Comms – to take us through transformation?
When people ask me what I do, I say that I am a trail guide for change-makers, walking a few steps ahead to take them where they want to go while reducing their risk and providing a bit of company on what is an intrinsically lonely journey.
Having directly catalyzed many transformational initiatives as a project lead, (co)Founder, or Board member, I have become – my capability extended by my firm, Vivit Group Worldwide – a resource for change-makers, my impact measured in dozens of new commercial, non-profit, and government transformational ventures across six continents (Antarctica? Perhaps one day).
I am defined by what I do as much as by what I don’t. I am among the very few privileged to exclusively focus on transformational change for what this year marks two decades of research and practice.
If we think of transformation as coming to inhabit wholly new places, I am that first person to walk into a pitch-black room, bumping my shins and describing what I discover while placing and lighting candles. Some might step over the sill before they can see, but most will wait until I’ve done enough scouting to define what they are dealing with. “This is cool! Let’s explore!” means I am on track. I know my work is done when leaders bring teams in, resourcing next steps. Having removed uncertainty, I exit and move to the next door flagged by a leader hoping for an experienced guide – in shin guards and night-vision goggles – that can validate their vision without them risking a concussion.
Not only am I more than okay with environments that stress everybody else out but I enjoy them the way some might enjoy escape rooms. I – as others like me – am uniquely suited for stepping through the never-before crossed thresholds, investigating, mapping out the future that you were convinced – correctly – was on the other side of that door, enticing you to join me, and lighting enough candles to make it an adventure, not a suicide mission.
Failure to recognize that effective transformation requires an appetite for uncertainty and a skillset quite distinct from that of incremental change sets people up for failure; an avoidable waste we cannot afford.
That said, I require people utterly unlike me to be in place before we launch transformation because they are just as essential as I am. Pitting transformation against stabilization is like pitting a racing car’s engine against its steering or breaks. Effective transformation demands that change-makers work in sync with tinkerers and stabilizers.
3. Design change
To me, design is a verb. I owe this to my education at the Department of Design and Environmental Analysis at Cornell University. Rather than an output or an esthetic, design was how we reimagined the world. It was how we conceived of healthcare environments that leveraged the best of current science to accelerate healing; of schools that tapped into each of a child’s senses to advance their learning outcomes; of places of respite that had the measurable effect of changing one’s neurological response from stress to rest. Training in design – as the power to shape – was my foundation for this work, and I would not have had it any other way.
For all that we meticulously design – from the body of an iPhone to the sound of an otherwise silent electric car makes to the experience of online shopping – we rarely design transformation, and this oversight costs us dearly.
If we’re lucky, the need for change management will be recognized. However, it is insufficient because it is by nature reactive and limited to the impact of transformation on people, not on systems or processes (I address process change next). Think of it like this. All agree that building design is distinct from building management. Neither is better and both are essential, but design comes first and determines what management the building will require throughout its life. Similarly, change design should precede and inform change management. Sadly, however, it almost never does. I have never encountered a request for change design. In fact, I have only ever done this work by expanding my scope to include it.
Relegating change entirely to change management is like leaving fire safety to firefighters. Those are the last resort. First, design and construction professionals reduce the risk of fire (quality electrical wiring, automatic shut offs on appliances, etc.). Then, they reduce the impact of fire should it occur (fire-retardant building materials, the sprinkler system, exit routes, etc.). We have building codes and inspections because we cannot imagine relying solely on a fire truck miles away.
Like first responders, change-management is essential. As is change design.
4. Attend to process change
It was on the team developing a business case for the automation of a state rail system when I first suspected that process change is the Achilles’ heel of transformation.
We were going to install new hardware on every passenger and freight train. Through software, trains would accelerate, cruise at optimum speeds, decelerate, and brake automatically, reducing accidents as well as increasing the overall carrying capacity of the railroad by allowing trains to follow closer together. This transformation would fundamentally change how drivers, signalers, controllers, and maintenance personnel did their jobs. It would require that the organization, having operated mechanical assets for over a century, became a savvy owner and operator of a distributed digital asset base. All up, a profound change.
I was responsible for advising on change management implications. Per usual, my scope initially excluded change design; an oversight I swiftly corrected. Then, I identified over two hundred affected processes. We are talking about the protocol a driver would follow before leaving the depot, or how an incident would be reported, or how a signaler would be evaluated for a promotion.
I did not quite comprehend the significance of the fact that nobody cared how those processes would get recalibrated. Not because it did not matter – it did not take a genius to acknowledge that it did - but because it was literally in nobody’s purview.
That was a big job of strategic significance for state government. More than a half of the team were international experts who moved countries for this gig, and we were at it for a year. There were people responsible for the technical solution and for systems integration. We were costing the state a million-odd dollars each month and yet nobody was responsible for the process change we would trigger.
I have learned the hard way that processes serve as the immune system, fighting the new regardless of its merit. Every behavior is enabled and supported by processes that won’t change themselves. That is our job in designing and implementing transformation.
5. Identify formulas for transformational change
Think of your favorite brownies. Certain ingredients need to come together in certain proportions. Too much flour, and the brownies are tough. Not enough egg, and they crumble. Not enough or too much of just one element can have your guests cringing and skipping dessert. Process is just as important: overmix and compromise the fudginess. Even if both the ingredients and the process are just right, circumstances can compromise the result. You must preheat the oven, adjust for high altitudes, and cool the pan to get neat slices.
Like your perfect brownie comes with a recipe, so does transformational change. We just don’t know the recipe yet; an omission I have dedicated my career and my current PhD research to rectifying.
Through the years of distilling the formula for effective systems change, I have identified many elements (I introduce them in the next section), but it is not good enough. Is it worth identifying the top three parts that a car needs to run safely? Maybe. But you wouldn’t get in unless somebody – many somebodies – know how to ensure that all the hundreds of parts, many unglamorous, were working well together. As a system.
Complex systems – and that is what most of us are trying to change – are more like a spider web than like a spice cabinet. Pulling on any one element affects the entire web; a web that likes being exactly how it is whether we agree with that or not.
Unfortunately, there is a lot we still don’t know. What are the social, institutional, and market factors involved? What are all the elements of transformational change? Are some of the elements optional while others act as preconditions? Are there catalysts proven to accelerate transformation? What are the prime conditions for their deployment and the likely effect(s) of doing so? What are the variables that determine whether a solution gets invented, agreed to, operationalized, implemented, imbedded, and evaluated? How can one know whether an issue is near its tipping point? How can you determine your best role in taking a vital but fringe issue past the tipping point where it is broadly adopted by society? And how should we evaluate the effectiveness of transformation?
While I appreciate that one Ph.D. is unlikely to get us all the way there, I would like to advance our knowledge and distill what we know into tools that can be readily used by change-makers. I seek to get as far as I can towards level-setting us with the same rigor that we do geneticists, chemists, or architects. In the meantime, this book captures what we know, as imperfect and messy as it stands, and sifted through my experience. I truly hope that it is only a matter of time before further knowledge makes this book seem like a simplistic intro. For now, however, you are holding in your hands the most comprehensive compilation of pressure-tested knowledge on change-making available today.
6. Equip change-makers as professionals
It is only in hindsight that I see a straight line between my training in design and what has become my trade. Within five years of completing my Masters, I went from launching the Green Building Council of Russia to overseeing the certification process of the Green Building Council of Australia to launching a sustainability offering within a project management firm to developing a documentary on corporate social responsibility to mobilizing a national grassroots movement to advising a social enterprise in India to investing in a startup trying to connect people around film to co-designing the built environment stream of COP17 in Durban, South Africa. To a naked eye, I was all over the place. It took years before I recognized a theme: transformation. But it was not until recently that I realized that change-making was my trade.
Experienced change-makers will tell you that there is both rhyme and reason behind their actions. The fact that their change-making can be methodically perfected over time defines it as a craft; a trade; a discipline. However, we haven’t seen it this way. Even though people have been transforming their realities since the beginning of time, change-making is seen as an indirect, even incidental by-product of other professional activities.
This disconnect has created many problems, not the least of which is our collective failure to equip change-makers for their vital work.
If you were a geneticist, your training would include everything we have learned about the human genome to date. As a chemist, you would start with the Mendeleev’s periodic table of elements, an exhaustive toolkit that both identifies all the building blocks of chemistry and explains how their behave with each other. As a change-maker, however, you are not so lucky.
Today, a change-maker has to identify, digest, and apply a breadth of fragmented knowledge: economics, social psychology, organizational design, marketing, entrepreneurship, game and decision science, perhaps with a touch of geopolitics. To make meaningful, sustained change, you must understand the intersectional issues at play; know how to design a pathway to wholesale change that is as actionable as it is dynamic; be an expert entre- or intrapreneur; be charismatic enough to activate hundreds if not thousands of people to advance your vision and yet mellow enough to secure low-interest financing; know how to scale and let go; be equally comfortable leading as you are falling into the background; and spend raised capital so well that they offer you more.
It is an awful lot. Especially since there is no structured way for us to build on each other’s progress. There isn’t a syllabus designed to graduate change-makers. Centuries into this, we still psych ourselves up for paragliding with a handmade parachute. Driven to make the world a better place, we jump off the cliff, under- (if not completely) unprepared.
Still, if you fall short fail at any aspect of this, it may feel like your entire vision will collapse. Given your wiring, you would probably feel guilty irrespective of how unrealistic it was from the beginning.
What’s worse is that we don’t even know why we feel compelled to jump. We don’t know – like I didn’t – that we’re change-makers, and that it is a legitimate profession. As I floundered for 18-odd years, there was no guarantee that I would have stuck it out, and that makes me sad. How many have we lost because we failed to tell them they were on track?
How many Olympic sprinters would we have if our recruitment strategy was merely hoping that exceptional runners find their own way to the blocks on race day?
Unlike doctors, chemists, plumbers, or florists, we lack the confidence of knowing the value of our skillset. In the absence of its recognition as a craft, we can’t even know with confidence if we’re any good at change-making.
Change-making is a wiring, a calling, and a choice but it is also a discipline and a trade that must be recognized, taught, practiced, and supported as such.
Whilst none of these challenges stop us – yes, that is one of the reasons change-makers are amazing! – it doesn’t leave us much by way of guidance, tools, or a community of practice.
Good news: new professions are defined all the time, as medicine and plumbing once were. What once was a fluke becomes commonplace around the world. We know how to do this! We just have not – until now – done this for transformational change.