Gardeners Not Mechanics

Organizations must change and adapt to remain in business.

Change efforts often erode quickly as people and organizational cultures revert to their previous ways, both affected by a built-in resistance to change.Change campaigns succeed or fail on a sliding scale, delivering some value in most cases but achieving less than 70% of expected value three-quarters of the time.

Too often, leaders approach organizational change as if they’re fixing a machine. Change the input, tweak the gears, test it, adjust and bingo – the desired output sparks to life and motors ahead. This method may work on machines because they operate in predictable environments, like cars on paved roads or a train on a track. However, it seldom works on people or corporate cultures.

Like a gardener in a yard, accept three things about the environment of your corporate change: unpredictability, interdependencies and your “limits of control.”

Organizations and people – like plants in a garden – live in a constantly changing environment. Businesses and the workplace are unpredictable. Standard or replicable processes and practices can’t generate continued...