Highly Symmetrical Organisations

How many times have you encountered a change that doesn’t make a difference? I have seen many such changes. There’s lots of noise and activity, but, in the end, no difference.

In physics, such changes are associated with high levels of symmetry. Take a sphere for example. You can spin it around and turn it upside down and it always looks the same. Lots of activity but no difference.

You get the same in some organisations. There is lots of talk about change, lots of activity and fuss, but very little difference comes out of it all. They are highly symmetric – lots of change but no difference.

To make a real difference, we need to change the things that keep things the same. But how do we do that? What things keep things the same?

Many things can keep things the same. For example, rigid culture, entrenched processes, or poor communication.

But there are also things that sit inside the minds of individual team members. A particular one of these inhibits people’s capacity to learn, adapt, and transform.

This thing is change fitness – or, more accurately, low levels of change fitness. Low change fitness makes it difficult for people to learn new things when things change. It makes it hard for them to adapt. And this negatively impacts change implementation.

If you are interested in learning more about this, join me in a free masterclass.