What is sustainable change?
Sustainable organisational change is a hot topic in management and consultancy. But what then is sustainable change exactly? How can it be observed? In my research on effective use of participative change with the whole system, I have built a theoretical framework for sustainable change, based on The Logic of Feeling. I also developed observable indicators for evaluation of interventions. Sustainable change is defined as ongoing, second order, collective learning. Not a new ‘status quo’, but a continuing process. The development phases of collective learning are shown in Figure 1:
Figure 1: A model for development of collective learning in an organisaton
See a video that builds up the model step by step (Tip: choose full screen and high quality view):
Read more about the theoretical framework for sustainable change, based on The Logic of Feeling, the complex social responsive theory of Ralph Stacey and sensemaking theory of Karl Weick, in my book chapter
‘What is sustainable change? Building a theoretical framework for effectiveness’.