Changing... the idea of sustainable change (a light rant)
© 2024, James McLean
Most people consider WHAT they want to change and assume they know HOW to change.
But, when people think about the nature and dynamic of change, they often say things like "enabling sustainable change". What they generally mean by this is that they want the change to 'stick' or endure. That's our usual interpretation of sustainable - something that endures in this state for a long time...
Change should not be sustainable!
I'm so over this term' sustainable change'! It's a mismatch of terms and paradigms.
Sustainability is best understood using the paradigm of living systems or complexity. This worldview focuses on relationships between the elements in the 'system'. Information flows through those relationships, and subsequently, outcomes emerge (such as a sustainable ecosystem) as the parts interact over time and space.
(I could go on another rant about how sustainability is usually interpreted - sustainable development - a fragment of real sustainability - but another time!)
All living systems (you are one) absorb information from their environment and change depending upon their identity (or purpose). That change can be slow evolutionary, physiological changes or faster psychological adaptation. Both are forms of adaptation or change. Adaptation is learning and developing a 'best fit' in the system that the living system is embedded within.
Change, therefore, emerges from the living system, and you don't want it to be 'sustainable' in the sense of endless and forever entrenched. As the environment changes, the living system will need to change again. A living system becomes sustainable because of its ability to adapt or change continuously.
Machines can be changed once, and hopefully, the change lasts. Despite our metaphors of organisations as machines (think about all the images of cogs and people mixed amongst the cogs!), people and organisations are not machines!
Rather than sustainable change, we are really aiming for adaptability—the ability to adapt (change) over and over again. That is what our world is demanding of us now—our mental adaptability.
We need organisations and people open to new ways of doing things.
And everyone says they are - but are you?
END RANT!