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“Physicists like to think that all you have to do is say, ‘These are the conditions, now what happens next?’ " – Richard P. Feynman.
Organizations like to think the same about their change programmes. No surprise that given this approach more change programmes fail than succeed. The above quote comes from Gleick’s best-seller on Chaos theory and refers to the ‘butterfly effect’, a term used to describe how sensitive some things are to the initial conditions that they start from. In Gleick’s words, ‘… a butterfly stirring the air today in Peking can transform storm systems next month in New York.' The technical term for the butterfly effect is ‘Sensitive Dependence on Initial Conditions’ SDIC. According to Gleick the concept of SDIC and the study of chaotic systems is reshaping the fabric of the scientific establishment.
Chaos theory was initially discovered when using computers to try to predict long-range weather forecasts. We now know of course that long range weather forecasts are not possible, but only as a result of years of study into chaos theory and SDIC. So what does this have to do with Change Leadership? Change programmes and weather systems have a lot on common, not least the out turn of any particular scenario is fundamentally sensitive to its initial conditions. As such we would be better advised to plan and manage our programmes of change based on the theory of chaos than on more predictable natural phenomena such as Tide Tables. There are of course many differences between predicting the weather and predicting the out turn of a change programme. The most significant of these is that we have some control over the initial conditions to which the programme is so sensitive. We believe the following conditions are the most critical factors –
Expert change leadership
A flexible infrastructure that supports change
An environment that is conducive to change
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