In Change-maker’s Handbook, Elena Bondareva has distilled her 20 years of experience in transformation of complex systems towards sustainability into a roadmap for emerging and experienced change-makers alike. Below is an extract from Section 4 Creating Change
Why do we get transformation so wrong?
Over the years, I have been sought out to do for change initiatives what Dr Gregory House (played on the series House by Hugh Laurie) does for obscure medical conditions: diagnose. For two decades of research and practice, I have been interrogating why transformation fails and doing so in the hope of reversing the odds.
In my observation, transformation fails much more frequently than it succeeds because:
- we don’t distinguish it from incremental change
- we don’t put the right people at the helm
- we don’t design transformation
- we overlook process change
- we don’t have formulas for transformation
- we don’t equip changemakers because we don’t see changemaking as a trade
To explore how we can do transformation better, let’s examine each of these in detail.
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A. We don’t distinguish transformation from incremental change
The biggest reason transformational initiatives fail is that we don’t differentiate transformation from incremental change, sometimes known as continual improvement.
The difference between incremental and transformational change is like that between efficiency and effectiveness. If efficiency is about getting to the intended result with the least waste of time, effort, and resources, then effectiveness is about getting the best possible outcome. If efficiency is about doing it right, effectiveness is about doing the right thing. In pursuit of a plausible vision, transformation throws today’s system up in the air to see how it lands.
If incremental change addresses animal cruelty by switching to organic hamburgers, transformation considers a vegan diet. If incremental change looks for water efficient irrigation technologies, transformation eliminates irrigation altogether. If continual improvement looks to improve staff productivity by 5 per cent, transformation considers automating repetitive tasks to free the staff for creative ones. And so forth.
Incremental change finetunes the system while transformation recasts it, fundamentally changing the rules, structures, systems, skills, and processes. Both are bedrocks of innovation essential for progress, but we have done ourselves an immense disfavour by failing to differentiate the two.
Before being cleared for major surgery, you may be required to bring your sugar levels down or let a recent tooth extraction heal. Imagine if going in for a medical procedure, you did not know if it were minor (you’d be home for lunch) or major (requiring 2 to 3 nights in hospital). Anybody would find that disorienting if not altogether unacceptable, which is why I advocate for transformation to be acknowledged as a major change to be planned differently than incremental change and by a different group of people.
B. We don’t put the right people at the helm
While both are critical to your long term care, you would not expect your dental hygienist to do your implant. So why do we expect the teams charged with fine tuning the status quo – business units, HR, IT, Legal, Comms – to take us through transformation?
When people ask me what I do, I say that I am a trail guide for changemakers, walking a few steps ahead to take them where they want to go while reducing their risk and providing a bit of company on what is an intrinsically lonely journey.
Having directly catalysed many transformational initiatives as a project lead, co-founder, or board member, I have become – my capability extended by my firm, Vivit Group Worldwide – a resource for changemakers, with my impact measured in dozens of new commercial, non-profit, and government transformational ventures across six continents (Antarctica? perhaps one day).
I am defined by what I do as much as by what I don’t. I am among the very few privileged to exclusively focus on transformational change for what marked two decades of research and practice in 2023.
If we think of transformation as coming to inhabit wholly new places, then I am that first person to walk into a pitch black room, bumping my shins and describing what I discover while placing and lighting candles. Some might step over the sill before they can see, but most will wait until I’ve done enough scouting to define what they are dealing with. “This is cool! Let’s explore!” means I am on track. I know my work is done when leaders bring teams in, resourcing next steps. Having removed uncertainty, I exit and move to the next door flagged by a leader hoping for an experienced guide – with shin guards and night vision goggles on the ready – that can validate their vision without them risking a concussion.
Not only am I more than okay with environments that stress everybody else out but I enjoy them the way some might enjoy escape rooms. I – as others like me – am uniquely suited for stepping through the never before crossed thresholds, investigating, mapping out the future that you were convinced – correctly – was on the other side of that door, enticing you to join me, and shedding enough light onto the unknown to make it an adventure, not a suicide mission.
Failure to recognise that effective transformation requires an appetite for uncertainty and a skillset quite distinct from that of incremental change sets people up for failure; an avoidable waste, and one we cannot afford and should not accept.
That said, I require people utterly unlike me to be in place before we launch transformation because they are just as essential as I am. Pitting transformation against stabilisation is like pitting a racing car’s engine against its steering or brakes. Effective transformation demands that changemakers work in sync with tinkerers and stabilisers. Furthermore, it attracts those who can be exceptional if recognised and supported. More on both points later.
C. We do not design transformation
To me, design is a verb. I owe this to my education at the department of design and environmental analysis within the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University. Rather than an output or an esthetic, design was how we reimagined the world. It was how we conceived of healthcare environments that leveraged the best of current science to accelerate healing; of schools that tapped into each of a child’s senses to advance their learning outcomes; or of places of respite that had the measurable effect of changing one’s neurological response from stress to rest. Training in design – as the power to shape – was my foundation for this work, and I would not have it any other way.
For all that we meticulously design – from the body of an iPhone to the sound of an otherwise silent electric car to the experience of online shopping – we rarely design transformation, and this oversight costs us dearly.
If we’re lucky, the need for change management will be recognised. However, it is insufficient because change management is by nature reactive and limited to the impact of transformation on people, not on systems or processes (I address process change next). Think of it like this: all would agree that building design is distinct from building management. Neither is better and both are essential, but design comes first and determines what management the building will require throughout its life. Similarly, change design should precede and inform change management. Sadly, however, it almost never does. I have never had a request for a change design. In fact, I have only done this work by expanding my scope to allow for it.
Relegating change entirely to change management is like leaving fire safety to firefighters. Those brave humans should be our last resort! First, design and construction professionals must reduce the risk of fire (quality electrical wiring, automatic shut offs on appliances, etc.). Then, they must reduce the impact of fire should it occur (fire retardant building materials, the sprinkler system, exit routes, etc.). Building codes and inspections do their part because we cannot imagine relying solely on a fire truck miles away.
Like first responders, change management is essential. As is change design. We will delve deeper into this in just a little while.
D. We overlook process change
It was on the team developing a business case for the automation of a state rail system when I first suspected that process change is the Achilles’ heel of transformation.
We were going to install new hardware on every passenger and freight train. Through software, trains would accelerate, cruise at optimum speeds, decelerate, and brake automatically, reducing accidents as well as increasing the overall carrying capacity of the railroad by allowing trains to follow closer together. This transformation would fundamentally change how drivers, signalers, controllers, and maintenance personnel did their jobs. It would require that the organisation, having operated mechanical assets for over a century, became a savvy owner and operator of a distributed digital asset base. All up, a profound change.
I was responsible for advising on change management implications. Per usual, my scope initially excluded change design; an oversight I swiftly corrected. Then, I identified over two hundred affected processes. We are talking about the protocol a driver would follow before leaving the depot, or how an incident would be reported, or how a signaler would be evaluated for a promotion. At the time, I did not quite comprehend the significance of the fact that nobody was planning to recalibrate those processes. Not because it did not matter – it did not take a genius to acknowledge that it did – but because it was literally in nobody’s purview.
That was a major project of strategic significance for the state government. More than half of the team were international experts who moved countries for this gig, and we were at it for a year. There were people responsible for the technical solution and for systems integration. We were costing the state a million odd dollars each month and yet nobody was responsible for the process change our solution would trigger.
I have learned the hard way that processes serve as the immune system, fighting the new regardless of its merit. Every behavior is enabled and supported by processes that won’t change themselves. That is our job in designing and implementing transformation.
E. We don’t have formulas for transformation
Think about your favorite brownies. Certain ingredients need to come together in certain proportions. Too much flour, and the brownies are tough. Too little egg, and they crumble. Not enough or too much of just one element can have your guests cringing and skipping dessert. Process is just as important: overmix and compromise the fudginess. Even if both the ingredients and the process are just right, circumstances can compromise the result. You must preheat the oven, adjust for high altitudes, and cool the pan to get neat slices.
Like your perfect brownie comes with a recipe, so does transformational change. We just don’t know the recipe yet; an omission I have dedicated my career and my current PhD to rectifying.
Through the years of distilling the formula for effective systems change, I have identified many elements (I introduce them in the next section), but it is not good enough. Is it worth identifying the top three parts that a car needs to run safely? Maybe. But you wouldn’t get in unless somebody – many somebodies – knew how to ensure that all the hundreds of parts, many unglamorous, were working well together. As a system.
Complex systems – and that is what you are most likely trying to change, if you are still reading this book – are more like a spider web than like a spice cabinet or a Jenga tower. Pulling on any one element affects the entire web; a web that likes being exactly how it is whether we agree with that or not.
Unfortunately, there is a lot we still don’t know. What are the social, institutional, and market factors involved? What are all the elements of transformational change? Are some of the elements optional while others act as preconditions? Are there catalysts proven to accelerate transformation? What are the prime conditions for their deployment and the likely effect(s) of doing so? What are the variables that determine whether a solution gets invented, agreed to, operationalised, implemented, imbedded, and evaluated? How can one know whether an issue is near its tipping point? How can you determine your best role in taking a vital but fringe issue past the tipping point where it is broadly adopted by society? And how should we evaluate the effectiveness of transformation?
While I appreciate that one PhD is unlikely to get us all the way there, I will do all I can to advance our collective knowledge and to distil it into tools that can be readily used by changemakers. I seek to get as far as I can towards level setting us with the same rigor that we do geneticists, chemists, or architects. In the meantime, this book captures what we know, as imperfect and messy as it stands, and sifted through my experience. I truly hope that it is only a matter of time before further knowledge makes this book seem like a simplistic intro. For now, however, you are holding in your hands the most comprehensive compilation of pressure tested knowledge on change making available today.
F. We don’t equip changemakers because we don’t see change making as a trade
It is only in hindsight that I see a straight line between my training in design and what has become my trade. Within five years of completing my Masters, I went from launching the Green Building Council of Russia to overseeing the certification process of the Green Building Council of Australia to establishing a sustainability offering within a project management firm to developing a documentary on corporate social responsibility to mobilising a national grassroots movement to advising a social enterprise in India to investing in a startup trying to connect people around film to co designing the built environment stream of COP17 in Durban, South Africa.
To a naked eye, I was all over the place. It took years before I recognised a theme: transformation, and it was not until recently that I realised that change making was my trade.
Experienced changemakers will tell you that there is both rhyme and reason behind their actions. The fact that their change making can be methodically perfected over time defines it as a craft; a trade; a discipline. However, we haven’t seen it this way. Even though people have been transforming their realities since the beginning of time, change making is seen as an indirect, even incidental byproduct of other professional activities. This disconnect has created many problems, not the least of which is our collective failure to equip changemakers for their vital work.
If you were a geneticist, your training would include everything we have learned about the human genome to date. As a chemist, you would start with Mendeleev’s periodic table of elements, an exhaustive toolkit that both identifies all the building blocks of chemistry and explains how they interact. As I pointed out in my reasons for writing this book, as a changemaker, you are not so lucky.
While I floundered for 18 odd years, there was no guarantee that I would have stuck it out – let alone excelled – and that makes me grateful that I did and sad that it came down to a gamble. How many have we lost because we failed to tell them they were on track? How many olympic sprinters would we have if our recruitment strategy was merely hoping that exceptional runners find their own way to the blocks on race day?
Unlike doctors, chemists, plumbers, or florists, we lack the confidence of knowing the value of our skillset. In the absence of its recognition as a craft, we can’t even know with confidence if we’re any good at changemaking.
Whilst none of these challenges stop us – yes, that is one of the reasons changemakers are so amazing! – it doesn’t leave us much by way of guidance, tools, or a community of practice.
Good news: new professions are defined all the time, as medicine and plumbing once were. What once was a fluke becomes commonplace around the world. We know how to do this! We just have not – until now – done this for transformational change.
How do we reverse the odds?
While knowing what is wrong is valuable in its own right, we must look for solutions.
Where it comes to transformation, we can begin to reverse the odds by addressing what isn’t working. Namely, we must:
- distinguish transformation from incremental change
- thoughtfully assign people to the team and support them to become the right people
- design the transformation we target
- attend to process change
- identify formulas for transformation
- equip changemakers as professionals
The insight in the rest of this chapter aims to put these concepts into practice for every changemaker willing to try.
The Change-maker’s Handbook is now available here.
