We want our change to be public.

We want visions, new behaviours, stories, posters, internal PR strategies.

We want competency frameworks and snappy slogans – the three ‘C’s and the four ‘D’s.

We want our leaders to model it.

We want to cascade it, promote it, embed it, plan it.

We want buy-in, engagement, champions, fire-starters.

We want early wins. And charts of what is to come.

We want to overcome resistance.

We want change designed, predicted, and engineered.

We want to measure it, chart it, and progress it.

But sometimes – no, often – the change that turns out to matter to us is far from what we expected, and far from the world imagined by change managers and corporate roll-outs.

It happens quietly and gradually, through the living actions of many. It emerges and unfolds, like buds budding.

It comes about when we find new stories to tell one another or new people to talk with, new ways of listening and speaking, new ways of making sense, and new ways of practicing together.

And it cannot be planned in advance because it’s subversive – undoing our preconceptions and opening new worlds we could not imagine until they were upon us.

Photo Credit: kevin dooley via Compfight cc