"The Change Engine I : Unconscious Incompetence"

Great post by my colleague, Jim Hancock, over at InsideWork. Solid insights and thinking on the issue of change. The diagram here was developed from prior research and thinking from Jim, Al, and Dan before I joined the InsideWork team:

If there were a straightforward, universal path to constructive change, we’d know it by now and that would be that. There isn’t; we don’t.

Change is seldom straightforward unless it’s catastrophic — natural disaster, economic meltdown, acts of war — and, judging from recent experience in all three categories, maybe not even then. Still, historically, people have looked back on such cataclysms and said, “Of course we changed; we had no choice.”

But even under dire circumstances, organizations and individuals are so different that the depth and durability of change can only be guessed-at — a subject for odds-makers and traders. (full post)