Killing the Change Agent


Living systems act to preserve their identity. If you perturb them they try to remove the source of perturbation. In short, if you try to change them, they try to kill the change agent.

Sometimes they do this brutally and obviously. A CEO gets fired, consultants are not ‘re-engaged’, and the change team gets disbanded and sent back to other work.

Sometimes they do this slowly and with subtlety. People are really enthusiastic about the change effort but can’t make the next meeting, they send a delegate in their place with no power to act, they just work harder at what they always did, proving there is no need for anything different, before easing off back to the old familiar routine.

When you perturb a system as a change agent, you can provoke powerful emotions, emotions that can be focused upon you. This can be particularly disturbing; your efforts to ‘help’ are being rejected. It is all too easy to take it personally; criticism of your efforts, your intentions and your capability are all too common. You need to be sure that these criticisms aren’t justified, that you really are doing things as well as you can.

And you need to constantly ask yourself hard questions. Who am I really doing this for? Is it for me or for the system? Is this really what is needed? How do I know?

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