Has Anyone Learned the Difference Between Change & Transformation Yet?

It's been over ten years since John Kotter told us in his article "Why Transformation Efforts Fail." He also told us how to improve the odds of corporate change programs. The problem is that, while his suggestions were widely accepted, the success rate is still hovering at under 50%. 

Doesn't it seem odd that given the high level of research and the many different kinds of writings done by business schools in an effort to better understand change management we still don't have the concept down? Along with the business writings there have been tomes of articles and books that have been written on the topic. Given that this is so you'd think we would have all of it well in hand and underway by now.

Some believe that there may be an underlying semantic problem. The confusion between what change is and what transformation entails is getting twisted or thought to be the same thing. They are, in point of fact, not the same thing at all. Unfortunately, there are a lot of managers that don't realize that fact. While we have come a long way in figuring out how to manage change, there is still a vast majority that struggles with the concept of transformation. 

To explain, what we mean when we say "change management", we mean putting into effect finite initiatives that might or might not cut across the organization. The focus is on being able to pull off a well-defined shift in the way that things will work. We know a lot more about it today than we did before, though it's still not considered an easy task. 

A good example would be when a large firm integrated engineers into its sales teams, there was a shift in roles, compensation, teamwork, goal setting, and client coverage. Hundreds of people were affected by this change. The firm applied well-known change management tools and principles such as building a coalition of leaders, engaging stakeholders, and getting early results, to name a few. Thus, the new approach in sales was implemented with success and now generates improved results. 

Transformation, on the other hand, is another animal altogether. It doesn't focus on a few discrete shifts, but instead, it focuses on an entire portfolio of initiatives that are intersecting or interdependent. The most important thing to understand is that the goal of transformation isn't to execute change but instead to reinvent the entire organization and implement a revised or new business model based on a clear vision of the future. It's a lot more unpredictable, experimental, and iterative. It also has higher risks. Even if there is a successful change management that leads to the execution of specific initiatives inside of the transformation, the entire thing could still fail overall. 

In the end, it's easy to blame ourselves when it comes to failures in change management. Even the various studies that have been done are telling us that we're not getting any better at it. We've mastered how to execute discrete changes, but we still know a lot less about how to engineer a transformation. Since we have to start somewhere, a great place to begin, if we want to get better, is to be much more clear about which one is which. 

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