decades under the lean and mean corporate clean up. Hierarchical corporate structures became flat pancakes and those battalions of unhelpful managers in the middle – blockers of change, gatekeepers of information flow, obstructive individuals, corporate parasites and ugly people in the ranks of middle management – left big corporations to be resuscitated as top managers in smaller firms, enablers of change, providers of information and knowledge, facilitators of change, and beautiful consultants selling services to their ex-employers at a premium rate. The science best positioned to understand corporate transformation “We trained hard…but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization”. This is not a quote from the latest biography of a retired CEO, or from a management consultant’s book in an airport bookshop. It was written in AD 65 by Caius Petronius, who apparently had an insight or two into organizational development.

In 513 BC, Heraclitus observed that, “There is nothing permanent except change.” And in the 16th century, Machiavelli stated in 'The Prince', “There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.” So there you are – change and reorganization was sort of invented by the Roman army, had already been accepted as inevitable by the Greeks, and has continued ever since. But don’t despair if you are part of it, even Machiavelli conceded that it is difficult. But how difficult?

If one has to judge using the conventional wisdom and shared beliefs in this area, the answer is: “Very”. I can’t think of any other phrase or statement more used in management conversations than the one that says ‘people are resistant to change’. By repeating it like parrots, we have taken it at face value. If you heard somebody in a company saying that people are not resistant to change, your first impression would be that he, or she, must be nuts! Look around you: all these legions of consultants and academics saying the opposite; a whole industry of books, tapes, conferences and motivational speakers delivering ‘how to’ (change) solutions, all under the premise that people need to be pushed, otherwise they would prefer to remain static. The Machiavelli school of change management is the official one: it’s going to be difficult, pain is inevitable, people don’t like it – push or else.

There is a particular sector of the organization that has repeatedly been given the Oscar for the ‘best resistance to change’. It’s called middle management. Apparently, there is this layer in the organizational sandwich, somewhere in the middle, that blocks everything, resists everything and that, quite frankly, we would be better off without. So, that’s what happened during the past two decades under the lean and mean corporate clean up. Hierarchical corporate structures became flat pancakes and those battalions of unhelpful managers in the middle – blockers of change, gatekeepers of information flow, obstructive individuals, corporate parasites and ugly people in the ranks of middle management – left big corporations to be resuscitated as top managers in smaller firms, enablers of change, providers of information and knowledge, facilitators of change, and beautiful consultants selling services to their ex-employers at a premium rate. The science best positioned to understand corporate transformation a

is nothing permanent except change.” And in the 16th century, Machiavelli stated in 'The Prince', “There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.” So there you are – change and reorganization was sort of invented by the Roman army, had already been accepted as inevitable by the Greeks, and has continued ever since. But don’t despair if you are part of it, even Machiavelli conceded that it is difficult. But how difficult?

If one has to judge using the conventional wisdom and shared beliefs in this area, the answer is: “Very”. I can’t think of any other phrase or statement more used in management conversations than the one that says ‘people are resistant to change’. By repeating it like parrots, we have taken it at face value. If you heard somebody in a company saying that people are not resistant to change, your first impression would be that he, or she, must be nuts! Look around you: all these legions of consultants and academics saying the opposite; a whole industry of books, tapes, conferences and motivational speakers delivering ‘how to’ (change) solutions, all under the premise that people need to be pushed, otherwise they would prefer to remain static. The Machiavelli school of change management is the official one: it’s going to be difficult, pain is inevitable, people don’t like it – push or else.

There is a particular sector of the organization that has repeatedly been given the Oscar for the ‘best resistance to change’. It’s called middle management. Apparently, there is this layer in the organizational sandwich, somewhere in the middle, that blocks everything, resists everything and that, quite frankly, we would be better off without. So, that’s what happened during the past two decades under the lean and mean corporate clean up. Hierarchical corporate structures became flat pancakes and those battalions of unhelpful managers in the middle – blockers of change, gatekeepers of information flow, obstructive individuals, corporate parasites and ugly people in the ranks of middle management – left big corporations to be resuscitated as top managers in smaller firms, enablers of change, providers of information and knowledge, facilitators of change, and beautiful consultants selling services to their ex-employers at a premium rate. The science best positioned to understand corporate transformation

shared beliefs in this area, the answer is: “Very”. I can’t think of any other phrase or statement more used in management conversations than the one that says ‘people are resistant to change’. By repeating it like parrots, we have taken it at face value. If you heard somebody in a company saying that people are not resistant to change, your first impression would be that he, or she, must be nuts! Look around you: all these legions of consultants and academics saying the opposite; a whole industry of books, tapes, conferences and motivational speakers delivering ‘how to’ (change) solutions, all under the premise that people need to be pushed, otherwise they would prefer to remain static. The Machiavelli school of change management is the official one: it’s going to be difficult, pain is inevitable, people don’t like it – push or else.

There is a particular sector of the organization that has repeatedly been given the Oscar for the ‘best resistance to change’. It’s called middle management. Apparently, there is this layer in the organizational sandwich, somewhere in the middle, that blocks everything, resists everything and that, quite frankly, we would be better off without. So, that’s what happened during the past two decades under the lean and mean corporate clean up. Hierarchical corporate structures became flat pancakes and those battalions of unhelpful managers in the middle – blockers of change, gatekeepers of information flow, obstructive individuals, corporate parasites and ugly people in the ranks of middle management – left big corporations to be resuscitated as top managers in smaller firms, enablers of change, providers of information and knowledge, facilitators of change, and beautiful consultants selling services to their ex-employers at a premium rate. The science best positioned to understand corporate transformation

that people need to be pushed, otherwise they would prefer to remain static. The Machiavelli school of change management is the official one: it’s going to be difficult, pain is inevitable, people don’t like it – push or else.

There is a particular sector of the organization that has repeatedly been given the Oscar for the ‘best resistance to change’. It’s called middle management. Apparently, there is this layer in the organizational sandwich, somewhere in the middle, that blocks everything, resists everything and that, quite frankly, we would be better off without. So, that’s what happened during the past two decades under the lean and mean corporate clean up. Hierarchical corporate structures became flat pancakes and those battalions of unhelpful managers in the middle – blockers of change, gatekeepers of information flow, obstructive individuals, corporate parasites and ugly people in the ranks of middle management – left big corporations to be resuscitated as top managers in smaller firms, enablers of change, providers of information and knowledge, facilitators of change, and beautiful consultants selling services to their ex-employers at a premium rate. The science best positioned to understand corporate transformation

decades under the lean and mean corporate clean up. Hierarchical corporate structures became flat pancakes and those battalions of unhelpful managers in the middle – blockers of change, gatekeepers of information flow, obstructive individuals, corporate parasites and ugly people in the ranks of middle management – left big corporations to be resuscitated as top managers in smaller firms, enablers of change, providers of information and knowledge, facilitators of change, and beautiful consultants selling services to their ex-employers at a premium rate. The science best positioned to understand corporate transformation and talent markets is not management science but ecology. The market place is an ecosystem of life and death, growth, maturity, degeneration, regeneration and, unlike biology, resuscitation. But this is a topic for another day.

Now, suspend judgment for a minute, forget management and look around. You may be married and have children who are small and growing, or already grown up and independent. You have perhaps moved jobs three or four times if not more, moved house a couple of times, and perhaps emigrated a while ago. Look at your neighbors, they may be in a similar situation and, if not, surely you know others like you. As for your health, perhaps you feel a bit older now and have stopped doing the things that you did when you were younger, but have started doing new things that you didn’t do just a while ago. Perhaps you stopped smoking recently. Perhaps you have remarried and started a second family. If not, you know somebody who has. You may have seen your children going through primary and secondary school, abandoning you for university (and providing you with that spare room that you always wanted) and having boyfriends and girlfriends, who always look different from what you expected. You’ve seen the death of your parents and the birth of your grandchildren, or you are now spending more time than ever with your surviving parents.

When you look around, what you see is a symphony of change. People, emotions, attachments and geographies sometimes changing with the rhythm of the four seasons, at other times with the violence of tsunamis and earthquakes. There is a name for all this: it’s called life. In life, pain is inevitable but misery is a choice. I can’t figure out who said this first – there are hundreds of people claiming authorship – but what I know is that management could learn a thing or two here. Just by looking at ourselves in the mirror we can see that all around us, and within ourselves, there is pure change. We are part of a Heraclites-sized world where we constantly adapt. From a biological viewpoint we are not resistant to change because we are change. You can’t say that a baby resists becoming a child and a child resists becoming an adolescent. Life and change is the same word. There are different degrees of pain associated with the various changes but we are always in transition; we are transition. And, incidentally, the transformation from pain to misery is largely in our hands.

Unnecessary misery
Sloppy,