Change Transition Curve and Dark Knight Rises

Many people who are involved in a Change in some shape or form go through a transition curve and can relate their experience to the following figure – This does not have to be a change or transformation programme at work although the curve can be easily absorbed in corporate world. 

Take a minute or two to study the transition curve if you are not familiar with the curve.

Now to the question what does this transition curve have in common to Dark Knight Rises? The connection goes in two parts:

Part 1.          How does change happen in an organisation? What happens to leadership?

Part 2.          Is Leadership during change really a super-hero effort?

I am going to answer both these parts and whenever possible, I will try to compare and contrast the scenes from Dark Knight Rises movie (Apologies to those who have not watched the movie – It is a must watch in my opinion).

Part 1:  How does change happen in an organisation? What happens to leadership?

Who are our leaders in the organisation? There is so much emphasis put on leadership, their vision & values for change. No doubts – They are all important. But all set and done, leaders are also people and so they also follow a similar transition curve as mentioned above. But there is a difference – Change leadership go through the transition curve before the rest of the organisation experiences the same. i.e. for example, they hit the depression mode by the time others feel shocked about the change. Pretty bold statement from my side, but there is a lot of truth. Have a private 1-1 conversation, they will probably agree. The following diagram represents the curve that both leadership and the rest of the organisation go through.

Let us compare this to Dark Knight Rises - This is similar to how Batman gets into denial mode when he believes that he can take on the villain Bane by himself but gets defeated first time around while the rest of Gotham experiences shock phase subsequently during the American football match. It does not stop there. Batman goes to the depression stage but he continues to build up in that dark cell and comes back with renewed energy again before the rest of the city.

Theoretically, the transition/change curve of leadership and the rest of the organisation go in parallel (as shown above) but in the real life, there are two factors that play a big role:

1. The Depth of the curve:  
                                        Over the course of change, the highs and especially the lows might and will vary for the leadership and the rest of the organisation. However, what is important is that the leadership curve stays ahead otherwise; the rest of the organisation will start to have its own doubts.


2. The road to recovery: 
                                        The most sensitive part of the change curve is the depression stage. This is where the positive forces of change should tip over the negative forces. Many of the change programmes falter at this point and impact of such failure affect the future change programmes as well.

Part 2: Is Leadership during change really a super-hero effort?

Yes and No. Yes, you need a strong sponsor to run the whole change show. No, because gone are the days of one person championing the whole organisational change. There needs to be involvement from multiple people to support the whole change. Again, this is similar to how Batman defeats Bane. Even though Batman was a single person, he did not do it all by himself. He had allies – Gordon (the commissioner), Blake (the detective), Selina (Kind of cat woman) and an army of cops.

Not only the allies (read Stakeholders) are needed, they need to sustain throughout the course of the change. Consider the following dialogue from Bane (the villain):

“It doesn't matter who we are... what matters is our plan....”

With “Plan, Plan and more plan” strategy, we are walking a tighter rope and hence there is a chance of losing people deliberately or due to circumstances. Just like how Bane kept losing some of this ally during the course of the movie. People work for people and not because there is a plan to follow.

That is why it becomes important that the change leadership style change in order to cater to different phases and needs of the people undergoing transition.

Up till this point, we are considering that the change curve has different stages and both leadership & the rest of the organisation goes through this stage linearly. Generally, that is not the case. Most of the change programme that I have seen, heard or read has an “Oscillation effect” at some point of time or even at time during multiple phases of change.

“What is an Oscillation Effort?” Let us look at an example of that during the depression stage.

It is normal and expected to feel pronounced level of fear, anxiousness and insecurity during an oscillation effect. This is where the leadership and vision does matter. And, if enough attention is not paid to this situation, the performance will go down drastically and a pessimistic feeling can spread within the corporate culture. This is where the communication is very important. Just like how Batman conveys to Gotham with the bat shaped fire on one of the Gotham’s sky scrapers informing that the Dark Knight is back for rescue and to lead Gotham towards safety.

But again, Dark knight was not alone. Remember, he had his allies which prove to stronger at the end. So change is not a one man show. Here is the summary:

• Organisation and Leadership both go through a transition curve
• Leadership through transition need to take different style and approach
• Transition curve is not linear and there can (will) be bumps along the road

Finally, I leave you with one applicable quote for change from Dark Knight Rises:

“A hero can be anyone. Even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat around a little boy's shoulder to let him know that the world hadn't ended.”

Do Newton’s three laws of motion apply to Change Management?

Have you ever been in or seen a situation where a change has failed to materialise or even worse the change (or transformation) programme has been successfully launched but failed to stick and eventually your organisation reverted to old ways of doing things. If your answer is “oh yes” or you are gently nodding your head or recollecting that “one” project, you know what I am talking about.

Still wondering what Newton’s 3 laws of motion doing here, read further:

Law 1:

Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it.

All organisations and its people are happy to do the same thing that has brought the organisation success in the past and therefore want to maintain the status quo.  i.e. “If it ain't broke, don't fix it”. However, that is not true in the current world that we live in. Here is where Newton’s first law comes into picture. There are always forces that are constantly applied to any organisation. External forces such as changes to industry, new players, new market or even a new CEO, bring about change(s). These are the triggers or the reasons for the change management.

These forces should be strong enough to propel changes through completely and successfully. Simply, it should be strong enough to do 2 things – one, move the people out of status quo and two, see through the change fruitfully. Otherwise, things will not just revert to the “old ways” but also affect any future change programmes. How? Returning to old ways and the pace at which the changes are rolled back creates a strong impression within the culture of the organisation and it will take a lot more effort to move the organisation away from its steady state of motion.

Law2:

The relationship between an object's mass m, its acceleration a, and the applied force F is F = ma. Acceleration and force are vectors (as indicated by their symbols being displayed in slant bold font); in this law the direction of the force vector is the same as the direction of the acceleration vector.

After all, we want to make change successful and we do need to build momentum. I did mention above that, the forces should be strong enough to finish the marathon called Change. There are two chief requirements for a force though.

1. Greater the size, the stronger the force is required.  Consider the diagram; there are two components in play here: The sheer size of the change (rock that is pushed up) and the environment (hill) in which the change is carried out and which plays a big part too in change acceleration.  Although I have used this diagram to show a case, this is not representative of all cases.  The situation could vary anywhere from moving small stone in a flat surface to even massive stone up a big mountain.


2. Acceleration in right direction. To push the rock up the hill, the force or the effort to make the change happen depends on where the effort is applied. Lot of effort will be wasted if the effort is not directly against the lines of gravitation.  Many a times, knowing where the gravitation force is a tough one. And, this is where we need the right people, tools and skills. This gravitation in change management dictionary is called as resistance and that takes us into the next law.

Law 3:

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

As we move along with the change programme, there is always resistance.  The change equation is given by:

D   *   V   *   F  > R

D: Dissatisfaction with the status-quo.  Why I law is applied.

V: Vision of the future

F: First Steps

R: Resistance to change.

While the first steps of the change management prepare the organisation for the change (Change Readiness assessment and factors that influence the success of change), resistance goes beyond the first stage of change management and that is why Newton’s III law is very true. Resistance is not bad. Consider any sports – A player or team has to elevate the level of its/their own game when pitted against a worthy opponent. In the same way, proponents of change should look to use the opportunity provided by resistance to increase the penetration of change. By doing that, there is a twofold advantage: First, change is accepted more widely and two, more importantly resistance is reduced or eliminated. It is better to eliminate resistance otherwise, it can modify the balance of change equation mentioned above to topple the change effort. Once the change effort starts to disintegrate, it is difficult to stop that chain reaction. i.e. equivalent of a rock rolling down the hill.

Now let us put all of these things together. While it is easy to break change management into three parts and analyse, things are not so easy in reality.  Why it is so complex might be the question? It is because of the fact that three laws are happening at the same time and organisations these days are running a few transformation programmes simultaneously, which complicates this problem further.  

Finally, I leave you with one line from Charles Kettering:

“The world hates change but that is the only thing that has brought progress.”

Why Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) is very relevant

Is BPR a thing of past? Does it have any value in the highly globalised world of today? Yes, I strongly believe that BPR is all more essential for today’s businesses. There are three significant factors warranting the need for BPR:

1. Evolution of Technology:

   Technology continues to undergo changes at rapid pace. The evolution of cloud computing, virtualisation and on-demand computing are changing the way businesses operate. Technology, to be more specific IT, has gained prominence in CEO’s agenda. Organisations have been investing a lot in replacing the old technologies with the new ones and expect a giant leap in its progress.  There are couple of main reasons behind this change:

• To upend how the business is done

• To develop insights using information gathered

The overarching question, at least from CFO’s point of view, is whether new technology delivers the ROI promised. Can these innovations in technology re-engineer the way the operations of the businesses? There are few caveats here. For one, it can help only in small stepped change if the organisations are just looking for replacement, albeit a better version.

These IT products, both off the shelf and custom, can help in facilitating and managing the processes.  However, in order to get the synergy between the business process and technology, the underlying business processes on which IT is build need a serious look.  This is where BPR is all more essential. BPR focuses not just on governance i.e. managing the process but also on the dynamics of the whole process including the collaboration between business units, hand-offs between core and non-core business processes.


2. Shared Services Phenomena:

   Shared services concept has gained an overwhelming presence in the last decade or so. However, the problem begins post the first phase deployment of shared services. Organisations try hard but struggle to optimise and refine the process further. As a result, the initial business justification for the Shared services operating model becomes weak. One of the fundamental reasons for such roadblock is because Shared Services are deployed using a push strategy. i.e. driven top-down and with that follows an opposite, if not equal, resistance from bottom-up. Using BPR as tool, the Shares services leader can engage the stakeholder to address the drivers instead of resistors and thereby achieving:

•  Increased buy-in from all departments

• Valuable inputs from users of processes

Once the buy-in from stakeholders is obtained, the BPR leaders can work collaboratively working with departments to develop the mindset towards standardisation of the processes. Post which, they can apply divide, conquer and consolidate methodology to target each function and plug in the best practices from Shared services seamlessly. By breaking down by functionality and diving deep within every process, BPR leaders along with key stakeholders can move the shared services model towards operational excellence. Through operational excellence, then organisation can channelise its focus towards providing better customer service.


3. Economic situation:

  With current economic malaise, companies are continuously on the search to identify strategies to re-establish its hold in the market place. The common denominator for such strategy is the core business processes within the organisation.  With employees more receptive to positive change during this time, Organisation can take this opportunity to shake the waste out of its processes and revamp the operating model using BPR.

In my experience, I have heard organisation questioning as to why we need BPR when we follow Total Quality Management (TQM) or Continuous Improvement (CI) techniques. My question is whether that is enough. Whilst TQM and CI have its own benefits, they work on the assumption that the businesses processes are fairly streamlined and strive to provide small improvements.



All these three factors bring a business justification on why BPR is an important leg in current challenging business environment. BPR, done correctly, will not just bring cost reduction and efficiency but also provide transparency and accountability. In addition, BPR can work in tandem with technology to offer right insights about the business operations.