Recently on the Agile Uprising podcast, Chris Murman and I chatted with Jason Little and Ken Rickard about their new book exploring organizational change: “The Six Big Ideas of Adaptive Organizations: From Frameworks to Sensemaking.”
Jason and Ken shared why they felt compelled to put these powerful ideas into the world: for too long the agile and organizational change communities have been stuck in dogmatic adherence to frameworks and certifications. We’ve fallen victim to the “transformation treadmill” of repeatedly attempting the same superficial changes only to be baffled when they fail to deliver meaningful outcomes.
Six Big Ideas Ideas for Understanding Organizational Change
The six big ideas represent Jason and Ken’s attempt to provide powerful lenses for exploring change efforts, moving beyond the rigidity of prescribed steps. Because at the end of the day, effective change is all about probing, sensing, and responding to your organization’s unique context.
Escaping the Vortex
One of the central metaphors Rickard and Little explore is the “vortex of behavior” – the powerful forces of inertia and existing cultural norms that pull people and organizations back towards the status quo. No matter how enlightened your organizational change vision, if you don’t account for this gravitational pull, you’ll inevitably get sucked back in.
To escape the vortex requires more than tinkering at the surface level of process and technology, which is why the “five levers of organizational design” emphasize the need to fundamentally rethink strategy, structure, and critically, the human elements like leadership and motivation. Just optimizing Jira workflows won’t cut it.
For too long the agile and organizational change communities have been stuck in dogmatic adherence to frameworks and certifications. Share on XMinding the Sharks of In the Waters of Organizational Change
But even understanding the deeper levers, truly transformative change tends to occur in successive “waves” over time. The first few waves are almost always focused on relatively superficial changes to process and tools. It’s only by cycling through these waves, being attuned to the “sharks of charge” and unmet expectations, that you can eventually break through to more profound shifts in mindset.
This is where we must employ different “strategies” – optimization for tackling discrete problems within the existing paradigm, and evolution for more radical reconceptualization. Too often organizations conflate the two, announcing a “transformation” that is really just incremental optimization.
No matter which strategy, any change effort must be grounded in the “four dimensions” – starting with yourself and your own motivations, making sense of the broader organizational system, fostering shared understanding among all stakeholders, and only then architecting intentional interventions.
Because change is fundamentally about human beings, the “five universals” describe patterns of behavior that seem to enable more effective change across contexts – developing shared purpose, engaging in dialogue over broadcasting, being transparent, addressing culture overtly, and embedding learning loops.
Embracing the Awkward
Throughout our conversation, Jason and Ken kept returning to the core idea that the six big ideas are not meant as a new rigid framework to implement, but rather thinking tools to apply judiciously based on your specific situation. As Ken said, we have to get more comfortable with “awkward silence” as people digest and make sense of these concepts through their own lenses.
They don’t have all the answers, but Jason and Ken hope the six big ideas can spark new discussions and unlock some escape velocity from the constraints of existing mindsets. The ideas will continue to evolve through dialogue and experimentation within the practitioner community.
To that end, they’ll be launching a website at sixbigideas.org to share more background on each of the ideas through explainer videos. But just as critically, it will allow all of us to share our own experiences applying or questioning the ideas in our unique organizational contexts.
Because that’s ultimately what it’s all about – providing different perspectives to make sense of the complexity and inevitable breakdowns on the journey of organizational change. Not as a panacea, but as fuel for powerful discussions that can lead to insight and progress.
We've fallen victim to the transformation treadmill of repeatedly attempting the same superficial changes only to be baffled when they fail to deliver meaningful outcomes. Share on XContinuing the Conversation
I’m looking forward to engaging in that broader dialogue and collaborative sense-making. After all, as Jason reminded us, these concepts don’t emerge from any single source, but centuries of humans grappling with how to collectively organize for shared purposes. By continuing that conversation – by sharing our stories – perhaps we can unlock some new escape velocities for our organizations.
So I encourage you to grab he Six Big Ideas of Adaptive Organizations: From Frameworks to Sensemaking (in print or kindle), marinate on the ideas, and bring your skepticism, experiences, and fresh perspectives to sixbigideas.org.
Jason and Ken will be listening and looking forward to making some sense together.
I know I’ll be doing the same.
