One transformation finishes just as another begins.
A new operating model. A technology implementation. A restructure. New customer expectations. AI. Cost pressure. New regulation. A change in strategy.
Then another wave appears behind it.
For senior leaders, this creates an uncomfortable reality. The challenge is no longer simply managing change. It is developing an organisation capable of living with continuous change.
Because many organisations still manage change as though it were an occasional interruption to normal business.
But increasingly, there is no return to normal.
There is simply the next wave of change.
We moved from paternalistic organisations towards greater worker power. From power towards process and standardisation. From process towards profit and performance. Then towards a stronger focus on people.
Today, many organisations find themselves in something more paradoxical: trying to reconcile performance with purpose, globalisation with local identity, technological acceleration with human needs, and commercial success with wider social and environmental responsibilities.
So whilst no wave is simply “good” or “bad”. Each emerges partly because the previous way of operating has reached its limits.
And each brings meaningful advances before eventually revealing limitations of its own.
That creates an important question for question for leadership..
Are we helping people understand the wave they are riding?? Or did we just we just hit them with the next one?
Because from the top of an organisation, change often looks orderly.
So by the time the wider organisation hears about the change, the people designing it may already be psychologically months ahead.
For everyone else, Tuesday can look radically different from Monday.
Which is exactly where the waves of change and progress starts to feel like whiplash.
There is another mistake buried in many transformation programmes.
We confuse explaining change with making change happen.
They are not the same thing, nor does that mean we actually understand the nature of change. Unsurprisingly our human experience of change is much less tidy.
Initially, people may be relatively comfortable with the existing reality.
Then something challenges it.
The numbers change, a customer leaves, technology makes an established process obsolete. The strategy shifts. Something makes the old way difficult to defend.
And resistance follows.
That resistance is not necessarily irrational. It can simply be part of confronting the fact that what worked before may no longer work now.
Moving forward requires a decision to change, preparation for what comes next, experimentation, difficult developmental work and repeated application until the new way becomes embodied.
Only then is there genuinely a new level of capability.
This is why a single announcement struggles to change an organisation.
It tries to compress a developmental journey into a communication event.
One practical response is to make the experience of change smaller.
Instead of asking teams to absorb a six-month transformation all at once, package meaningful pieces of change into two-week increments.
For every increment, answer three questions:
Then sit down and think about the actual experience of it for the rest of the organisation.
Put it on one page. Then get to work.
Take ownership and change the dynamic.
At the end of the increment, don't send another update saying that the programme remains green. Instead:
Then afterwards ask what worked? what didn't? what have we misunderstood? And what needs to change before we do it again?
This way rather than just communicating to an audience you’re creating an audience that’s participating in change and have agency in relation to it.
People no longer have to imagine what a distant transformation might eventually mean. They can see it, test it, challenge it, and improve it.
That matters because visible work creates a different kind of organisational conversation. Instead of people saying ‘what are they doing’, ‘why would they do this to us?’ you begin to hear "I can see what we're trying to solve. Here's what we'd need to change to make it work."
That’s a significant shift.
Nor should they.
One of the dangers of many change programmes is the assumption that good communication should make resistance disappear.
It won't.
And sometimes resistance is useful information.
People closest to the work may see consequences that central teams cannot.
They may know where a process will break. They may understand a customer behaviour the project team has missed. They may simply need longer to let go of something that previously made them successful.
The Step Change journey is useful precisely because it doesn't pretend people move instantly from hearing about change to embracing it.
There is challenge.
There can be resistance.
A decision has to be made.
Preparation matters.
Then come the trials and tribulations of doing something differently.
And some changes require deeper work before they become part of how someone genuinely operates. A short change along the way does not halt the journey, it makes more of it visible.
And visibility gives leaders something they can work with.
This can also change how leaders think about those two-week increments.
Not every increment has to produce a finished answer.
Some are about discovery.
Some are about decision.
Some are about development.
And eventually comes delivery.
The new behaviour, system or way of working becomes real enough to create a different result. That progression from Discover, to Decide, Develop, Deliver is embedded in the Step Change Wheel.
Which means that rather than asking ‘Are we on track’ ‘Have we reached the milestone?’ it’s getting you to ask ‘where are we in the journey?’ and ‘what does progress need to look like next’?
The goal of two-week increments is not to pretend complex transformation can be completed in a fortnight because it can’t.
The point is to create a predictable rhythm inside an unpredictable environment.
Why. What. How.
Work. Show. Learn. Repeat.
That rhythm gives people something solid to hold onto while the bigger wave continues moving.
It also gives leaders much faster information.
Rather than discovering six months later that adoption is poor, you see problems after two weeks.
Rather than discovering that central assumptions don't survive contact with the frontline, you find out while there is still time to change them.
Rather than communication being an activity surrounding transformation, communication becomes part of how transformation happens.
You cannot stop the wave. You cannot hold it back while everyone gets comfortable.
And you probably cannot accurately predict every wave coming behind it.
The capability you should want to develop is learning how to surf.
That means understanding the conditions you are in. Recognising when an old way of operating is running out of road. Preparing people for what comes next.
Then experimenting, adjusting, developing that capability.
And eventually making a new way of working feel natural enough that people can perform at a new level. Before the next wave arrives. And based on the evolution of organisations another wave always does arrive.
So perhaps the objective of change leadership should not be to get everyone safely through the current transformation.
It should be to leave the organisation more capable of navigating the next one.
That is how you unlock more of your team's potential.
Not by insulating people from change, or sending out more communications about it.
But by helping people understand where they are, see where they are going and participate in the journey between the two.
Turn the big wave into something visible and manageable.
Give every increment a clear why, what and how.
Show the work.
Let people test it.
Learn.
Adjust.
Move again.
Less whiplash.
More progress.
And, with every wave, a more change-capable organisation.