Organizations do not change simply because someone commands them to. It is difficult to manifest change and even more difficult to sustain it. It is not just that it is difficult to predict how people will react to change, but that people have conflicting behaviors regarding change. On one hand, most people want to understand what they are to do, on the other hand, they don’t want to be mandated to. Too much change can cause resistance, too little can cause stagnation.

The bottom line is any approach must have the following characteristics in order to maximize its chances of success:

Provide a straightforward method of starting that addresses only a few key items

• This requires an approach that works on the challenges of the organization
• This implies the starting point must be an assessment to determine what these challenges are

Provide a method of seeing how well one is accomplishing these initial actions (inspect and adapt) and adjust accordingly

Provide a method to determine if different actions are needed (double loop learning) and adjust accordingly

This talk discusses:

• Why this general approach is required
• How one can start with a simple framework attending to only a few things
• How to adjust this framework by modifying what is being worked on as the organization evolves its approach