Is transformation change in a new look?

Transformation is "in" because Change now sounds really worn out, don't you think? Especially since change processes rarely deliver what forward-thinking leaders hope for. Would transformation be a better answer? Or is transformation just change in a new linguistic look? However, if it were more than just a clever rebranding by sales-savvy consultants, when does each concept fit and what are the differences? Change. Adapting and learning to reach the goal. Change processes are planned organizational adaptation and learning processes. They are aimed at a known goal, a desired outcome. Necessary learning contents such as competencies, attitudes, or new values are derived for this desired state from the perspective of the initiators and packaged in a way that is suitable for participants. At the same time, structures, systems, and processes are adjusted. This is done in the hope that those in charge will be right about their goal and that the planned measures will solve current problems or achieve desirable goals for the planners (e.g., increased profit and growth, modernization). New organizational structures and processes are planned, job profiles are adapted, technologies are implemented, and organizational culture is stimulated. Employees are accordingly moved, hired, or reduced. The change and learning steps are implemented in a mechanistic or systemic way. Following the unfreeze-change-refreeze development understanding. Since the 1980s, iterative systemic learning processes based on reflection and feedback have been state-of-the-art. Those affected become participants, even actors. The ongoing feedback of the experiences gained during implementation serves as the engine and focal point of systemically inspired change architectures. Going a level deeper than this single-loop learning principle is double-loop learning. It involves exploring the mental models and implied values that become visible in decisions and solutions. Only by looking at the often implicit mission and corporate identity can the most significant and rarest level of feedback in change processes (deutero-learning) be achieved. In practice, hybrid forms dominate. The fallback to authoritarian-mechanistic concepts usually occurs when speed is essential, and change candidates do not react as expected. However, regardless of the number of loops turned on different levels of reflection and the development understanding chosen, it remains adaptation to a known goal within the existing framework of reality. How does this differ from transformation, and what is transformation really? The reinvention of reality. Even though methods and formats often seem very similar from the outside, triggers, processes, and helpful conditions of change and transformation fundamentally differ. Because transformation is not an adjustment, optimization, or development towards a known, already conceivable goal. Transformative change means transitioning from the reality of one epochal development arc to the next. Linked to the ability to utilize the emerging new space of possibilities. Transformative transitions are radical mental reorganizations. The retelling of reality, including the role, yes, identity of the storyteller, be it a person or organization. Only when this radical new understanding of the world succeeds can previously unthinkable new goals be identified on the horizon because they can now be thought of at all. The radically new visions that emerge serve as the basis for the usually necessary subsequent change projects. An epoch is everything that determines the reality and identity of the perceivers for a certain period, continuously shaping and, of course, limiting them. Such an era or paradigm can describe very different development arcs. For example, when a new technology, a specific economic policy, or a social environment creates a new world experience. But also, a time period delineated by an "epochal" event in the storytelling of an organization is a developmental epoch. An era with an unconscious but effective internal truth, with a beginning, growth, peak, decline, and end. Epochal change is not characterized by the duration or extent of the objective consequences of the transition. Rather, it is the successful dissolution and retelling of the previous world and self-understanding of a person, organization, or society. Being able to read and interpret signs. Success lies in being able to read a situation and use the appropriate concept, be it change or transformation, and being allowed to do so. Too often, ignorance of the differences, misinterpretation of the starting situation, or simply refusing to do so lead to costly and ineffective change projects. The world characterized as VUCA1 today is a signal of epochal upheavals. And currently, several major epochal development arcs are coming to an end simultaneously. For example, the era of unbridled growth-oriented economic systems based on fossil fuels and limitless exploitation, lasting over 250 years, marked by climate warming and diverse ecological collapses. The era of neoliberal financial turbo-capitalism, which perverts many achievements of the market economy, accelerates the urgently needed paradigmatic renewal. The disruption caused by the pandemic acts primarily as a corrective lens and accelerant. But also, the end of the more than 10,000-year-old era of local lifestyles (as opposed to nomadic ones), brought about by digitization, which increasingly abolishes the importance of spatiality and temporality, disrupts existing orders. State legislation, national taxes, on-site work concepts, as well as stationary distribution channels, are all thrown off balance. The central question in this time of upheaval is, where is change still appropriate? In which cases must current ways of thinking and solutions, often the cause of the problem, be abandoned to open up new horizons? The end of confusion. The often missing distinction between the two concepts usually continues in the implementation phase, with disastrous consequences. Because the process of transformative transition and the corresponding emotional and substantive challenges are fundamentally different. Moreover, they are often largely taboo in a business or socio-political context. But as a reader of this article, you now have the advantage of knowing the key distinguishing features and choosing the appropriate approaches. To further strengthen your transformation competence, you can pause at the next problem or planned change initiative and, before resorting to the usual problem-solving reflex, ask yourself the following questions: Change or epochal transformation? 1. Why does this problem, this requirement arise at all? Dig deeper to the core by subjecting your answers to this question again and repeating this process at least five(!) times. 2. What hope do you associate with a potential solution? 3. Why is this solution not just more of the same (problem) and therefore only delaying the inevitable change? 4. What epochal end could become visible instead? I wish you exciting insights!