Change Management Was a Breakthrough. Is It Enough?

Synopsis

This is not ingratitude. It is an honest accounting of what changed while the models didn't. In 1995 the author became a change specialist out of infatuation rather than career planning, at the moment a generation of change thinkers gave practitioners something they had never had: a common language and a repeatable method. Kotter's eight steps, Conner's framework — these were genuine contributions that distilled hard-won experience into sequences that could be taught and applied across industries, and at PricewaterhouseCoopers they measurably improved success rates. Through the 2000s they continued to handle complicated problems reasonably well, because you could still define a future state, marshal sponsorship, train the workforce, execute and stabilise. The logic held, more or less. What this paper documents is why it stopped holding. The standard critiques are by now familiar — change is not linear, “resistance” blames the recipient rather than interrogating the system, one-to-many influence assumes information creates action, and the models operate on attitudes rather than observable conduct. Organisational scholars identified these problems decades ago. What is new is that the profession built its entire certification infrastructure as if those critiques did not exist, and the centre of gravity in change models remains untouched.

Key findings

• The 1990s change models were a real breakthrough: they gave practitioners a common language and a repeatable method, and at PricewaterhouseCoopers they measurably improved success rates on eight-figure transformation programmes.
• Most change methodologies rely on one-to-many influence — cascade briefings, town halls, communications plans — that assume information creates action, and they operate on attitudes and intentions rather than observable conduct.
• Argyris showed organisations systematically defend against the learning change requires, Mintzberg showed strategy is emergent rather than designed, and Stacey showed planned approaches collapse in complex responsive environments — decades ago.
• The 1990s goal was to make change universal, predictable, manageable and template-able — assumptions that hold for a bounded ERP rollout and fail for continuous emergent change.
• The critiques are now widely accepted, yet the centre of gravity in change models — and in the certification programmes built on them — remains untouched.