The Enterprise Change Office

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When achieving strategic objectives requires organisational change, success depends upon the organisational capability needed to govern, coordinate, and sustain that change across the enterprise.

This website presents a strategy-led conceptual framework for organisational change. Rather than focusing solely on how individual initiatives are delivered, it examines organisational change as an enterprise capability. It explores the relationships between strategy, the Enterprise System, Operational Continuity and Governance Logic, distinguishes between First-Order and Second-Order Organisational Change, and explains the organisational capabilities required to govern and sustain change successfully.

The Enterprise Change Office is presented as one possible organisational model through which that capability can be developed, governed and continually improved. The framework itself is independent of any particular organisational structure.

The webpages in the website progressively develop this framework. Each page introduces one foundational concept before showing how it relates to the others, allowing the framework to build systematically from first principles into an integrated view of organisational change.

If your organisation is considering how to strengthen its organisational change capability, evolve an existing PMO, or determine whether an Enterprise Change Office is appropriate, the Services  page explains how I can help. It describes how I work alongside organisations to strengthen the governance, organisational capability, and organisational arrangements needed to support successful organisational change.

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Why I Use The Term “Enterprise Change Office”

The term Enterprise Change Office is used to distinguish the broader organisational capability required to support organisational change.

The Enterprise Change Office

An Enterprise Change Office provides the enterprise capability needed to govern, coordinate, and continually develop organisational change by integrating multiple complementary practice areas.

A Definition Of Organisational Change

This website adopts a strategy-led framework that examines the relationships between strategy, the Enterprise System, Operational Continuity, Governance Logic, and the Two Orders of Organisational Change.
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Does First- and Second-Order Change Still Apply?

A valid question is whether these concepts, developed in a different era, remain relevant today. Organisations now operate in environments described as VUCA – Volatile, Complex, Nonlinear, and Continuously Changing. Recently, BANI – Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, and Incomprehensible – has joined VUCA in describing such conditions. Does thinking from the 1970s and 1980s still provide value?

These concepts remain useful because First-Order and Second-Order Change classify what is being changed, not the environment in which change occurs.

An organisation in a highly uncertain environment may continually adapt its processes, structures, technologies, and capabilities, while its underlying assumptions and principles remain intact. Regardless of the extent or complexity, such adaptations are considered First-Order Change as defined here.

At times, environmental changes may challenge these underlying assumptions. When an organisation must reconsider how it creates value, exercises authority, allocates resources, defines its identity, or manages accountability, it enters the realm of Second-Order Change.

This distinction does not require change to move neatly from one stable state to another. Continuous adaptation, experimentation, and emergence can all occur within First-Order Change. The distinction is analytical, focusing on what is changing rather than the timing or frequency of change.

The boundary between these types of change may not always be clear, especially when ongoing adaptation starts to challenge the organisation’s underlying assumptions. However, the distinction remains analytically valuable: it clarifies whether change occurs within the existing Governing Logic or if that logic itself is being reconsidered.

VUCA and BANI offer different ways to describe organisational environments, but they do not replace the need to ask a fundamental question: Are we changing the organisational system within its existing logic, or does that logic itself require reconsideration?

Linda Ackerman and Three Types of Change

Linda Ackerman developed an influential distinction between Developmental, Transitional and Transformational Change in Ackerman (1986). At the time, she was primarily an Organisation Development practitioner and consultant.

Ackerman defined Developmental Change as improving existing conditions. Transitional Change involves moving from a current state to a clearly defined new state, with the transition managed over a controlled period. In contrast, Transformational Change results in a new state that emerges over time and is not fully known in advance.

This distinction is important because it makes transformation qualitatively different from continuous improvement or implementing a set organisational design. The three types of change are explored in Figure 2.

Developmental Change Improvement of what is; new state is a prescribed enhancement of the old state. 26_11
Transitional Change Design and implementation of a desired new state that solves an old state problem; requires management of the transition process to dismantle the old state while putting in place the new state; managed timetable. 26_12
Transformational Change

Market requirements force fundamental changes in strategy, operations, and worldview.

New state is unknown - it emerges from visioning, trial and error discovery, and learnings.

New state requires fundamental shift in mindset, organising principles, behaviour, and or culture, as well as organisational changes, all designed to support new business directions.

Critical mass of organisation must operate from new mindset and behaviour for transformation to succeed and new business model or direction to be sustained.

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Figure best viewed on tablet or above

Figure 2: Ackerman’s Classification Of Change

On this website, daschange.info, Ackerman’s Developmental and Transitional Change are considered forms of First-Order System Change, while Transformational Change aligns with Second-Order Transformational Change. This mapping is an analytical interpretation provided by this website, and not part of Ackerman’s original model:

  • Developmental and Transitional Change are treated as forms of First-Order Change, since both can occur while the underlying organisational order remains substantially intact.
  • Transformational Change is associated with Second-Order Change, where that underlying order itself is changing, and the eventual future state cannot necessarily be specified in advance.

Jean Bartunek and Michael Moch and the Orders of Change

The Organisational Development scholars Jean Bartunek and Michael Moch developed the distinction between different orders of organisational change from a cognitive perspective. In Bartunek and Moch (1987), they examined how the concept of schemata could help explain different forms of organisational change.

Schemata are organising frameworks through which people understand and interpret events. Bartunek and Moch described First-Order Change as incremental change occurring within schemata already shared by organisational members. Second-Order Change involves modification of those shared schemata themselves.

They also introduced Third-Order Change, which they described as developing the capacity of an organisation’s members to recognise their existing schemata and change them as circumstances require.

Their work extended the distinction between First-Order and Second-Order Change by highlighting the importance of how organisational members interpret their environment. It demonstrated that fundamental change may require altering the shared frameworks through which organisational reality is understood, not just structures, processes, or behaviours.

Amir Levy and Second-Order Change

Amir Levy was an organisational theorist whose work in the 1980s helped develop the distinction between First-Order and Second-Order Change specifically in relation to organisations.

Levy (1986) distinguished between changes within an existing organisational framework and Second-Order Change, which involves more fundamental organisational transformation. He characterised Second-Order Change as multidimensional, multilevel, qualitative, and discontinuous, involving a shift in organisational paradigm.

Together with Uri Merry, Levy developed these ideas further in Levy and Merry (1986). Their work examined organisational transformation through a range of perspectives, including organisational paradigms, culture, myths, purpose and approaches to managing Second-Order Change.

Levy’s work was instrumental in defining organisational transformation as conceptually distinct from extensive or incremental change. Transformation involves a qualitative shift in the organisation and its underlying paradigm, not just the scale or quantity of changes.

Paul Watzlawick and the Two Orders of Change

Paul Watzlawick was a psychologist, communication theorist and influential figure at the Mental Research Institute in Palo Alto, California. Working with John Weakland and Richard Fisch, he drew on systems theory to examine why attempts to solve problems sometimes leave the underlying conditions that generate them unchanged.

Watzlawick et al (1974) distinguished between First-Order and Second-Order Change. First-Order Change occurs within an existing system: its components, behaviours or processes may change while the rules governing the system remain substantially intact. Second-Order Change alters the system itself by changing the rules, assumptions or relationships through which it operates.

This distinction was further developed and applied to organisational change by Levy, Bartunek, and Moch. Ackerman, meanwhile, introduced a related framework distinguishing Developmental, Transitional, and Transformational Change.

Watzlawick et al. provides an important conceptual foundation for the Two Orders of Organisational Change used within this website.

Ecosystem

The Office of Government Commerce And P3O®

The Office of Government Commerce (OGC) was a UK government body established in 2000 to promote efficiency and best practices in public sector procurement, project management, and programme management. One of its significant contributions was the development of the P3O® (Portfolio, Programme, and Project Offices) framework, first published in 2008. This framework provides principles and guidance on designing and operating effective support structures for delivering change. P3O® was created in response to the growing need for organisations to align their strategies with execution and to standardise the roles of PMOs across different contexts.

In 2014, the stewardship of the OGC’s best practice portfolio was transferred to AXELOS, a joint venture between the UK Cabinet Office and Capita. AXELOS continues to maintain and publish the official P3O® guidance, with the most recent version being “Portfolio, Programme and Project Offices: P3O® Guidance” (AXELOS, 2013).

The guidance outlines a hierarchy of structures, which is summarised in Exhibit 1. It also notes that “projects” can stand alone and do not need to be part of a “programme”.

Exhibit 1: P30® Hierarchy