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.”