Upshifting to Superperformance requires a critical phase transition. For organizations, the experience is the same as water turning to ice –or an outbreak that becomes an epidemic. It is only when critical mass is achieved that true transformation occurs and change will be lasting. This is a second order change. Why are these simple physics missing from the change management literature?

The reason is because change cannot be managed in the first place.

This problem stems from the same outdated mechanistic paradigm of what can be managed and what must be led. The truth about transformational change is that it does not occur from the outside in – it occurs from the inside-out.

It is widely known that the vast majority of transformation initiatives are unsuccessful. While the literature suggests that less then 30% successfully accomplish their objectives, change agents themselves report the true percentage is less then 15%.  Clearly traditional approaches to transformation – while expedient – have not been very helpful.  The evidence of Superperformance – successful large scale change in organizations and projects of every size – points to something different.

The evidence tells us that unless the intrinsic motivation of process owners is Galvanized, and they psychologically ‘own’ the change themselves, they will be doing it because they have to and not because they want to.  This is an inevitably short-term proposition. Creating conditions that catalyze and harness the intrinsic motivation of process owners is an indispensable requirement for Superperformance, and usually the missing ingredient. There are many ways to provoke  the psychological involvement of process owners, such as appreciative inquiry, design conferences, world cafe sessions, and so on, but the fundamental requirement around people is to involve them in the change.

At the same time wanting to change and knowing how to change are two different things. Knowledge for Change (knowing what to do) is where operational excellence begins. Equipping process owners with the knowledge and methods of improvement (understanding of optimization, appreciation for a system, iterative PDSA cycles, voice of the customer, methods of lean, agile, performance scorecards, use of statistical methods, and so on) i.e. the tools of a never-ending continual improvement program–is the second critical element of transformation to Superperformance.

Thirdly, Concrete Actions must be taken. These actions convert the concept of change into the reality of change, and establish the meaningfulness and urgency of the initiative. The first steps to transformation are always the hardest but if they are certain and confident they will rapidly engage a community of practice.

The Status Quo is very powerful. The force of these three previous elements must be strong enough to overcome the force of the Status Quo. It is only when the energy, information, or temperature passing through any system is increased to the place where the old system cannot sustain it, that a critical phase transition occurs, and the whole system changes, adopting a new steady state. This is the same experience in any organization system.

It will only be when the force of these three (Galvanized Culture x Knowledge of What to Do x Concrete Actions Taken) becomes more powerful than the Status Quo that transformation will occur.

Hence the formula:

C= f (GKC) > f SQ

where:

• C means the Rate of Change
• f means Force Of
• G means the Galvanized Culture
• K means Knowing What to Do
• C means Concrete Actions Taken
• SQ means Status Quo

When organizations are reframed as living, complex adaptive systems (organisms), the simple heuristic of ‘manage process, lead people’ appears as the obvious and direct path to optimization. The evidence is that long-term market out-performers, i.e. Superperformers, all exhibit this pattern. The control that is called for is control of process, and the liberation that is called for is the liberation of spirit. The biophysics that guides this new paradigm weds the biology of improvement science to the physics of complexity science. Like Bertalanffy’s general systems theory, this new discovery transcends every business discipline, every domain. Performance Management, Talent Management, Project Management, Diversity Management, Knowledge Management, Change Management etc. . . . all give way, shifting in orientation from management to optimization, which joins management and leadership together as necessary and complementary hemispheres.

It is Performance Optimization, Talent Optimization, Project Optimization, Knowledge Optimization, and so on, that supplants management as the superior objective. Superperformers already know this and operate intuitively from this paradigm. Furthermore, this new knowledge recasts management and leadership: from a view of them as hierarchical locations to a view of them as distributed enterprise-wide properties, akin to your own immunity, consciousness, or nervous system.

Organizations of every type can access this new knowledge to reconstitute business strategy and transform performance.