Why Use The Term Initiative
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Contents
Organisational Change Requires an Enterprise Capability
Within this website, organisational change is defined as:
“The adaptation of an organisation’s Enterprise System and, where necessary, its Governing Logic to enable the realisation of its strategy and objectives.”
The Enterprise System includes the interconnected Business Model, Value Chain, Operating Model, and Culture that enable the organisation to create value. Governing Logic refers to the underlying principles and assumptions shaping this system. Organisational change may involve adapting elements of the Enterprise System or, when necessary, reassessing and changing the Governing Logic. Further details on this definition are provided here.
Organisations rarely achieve change through a single activity. Multiple changes often occur simultaneously, competing for resources, creating dependencies, and collectively impacting the organisation’s ability to execute its strategy. Therefore, optimising organisational change requires more than managing individual initiatives; it demands an enterprise-level capability.
Why an Integrated Enterprise Capability?
Organisational change requires diverse practices and expertise, depending on the nature of the change. Change Initiatives must be properly conceived, mandated, governed, and managed. Options for adapting the Enterprise System should be developed and evaluated, human and behavioural impacts addressed, and benefits defined and tracked through to operational use. Change also relies on specialist expertise from areas such as Finance, Human Resources, Technology and Data, Risk, Legal, and Commercial, as appropriate to each initiative.
Managing changes independently does not provide sufficient enterprise capability. Individual initiatives can therefore appear well governed and well managed while, collectively, they compete for the same people, impose conflicting demands, duplicate expected benefits or exceed the organisation’s capacity to absorb change. The problem may only become visible when viewed as an enterprise system rather than a collection of individual initiatives.
Governance bodies require an enterprise-wide view of all organisational change, including strategic justification, progress, dependencies, cumulative impacts, resource needs, capacity constraints, risks, and expected benefits. The organisation must also develop and retain effective practices, knowledge, and practitioner capability, and learn systematically from experience rather than reinventing approaches for each new initiative. The enterprise capability is built by integrating the governance, design, execution, and learning of organisational change across individual initiatives and organisational boundaries, rather than duplicating existing disciplines.
An integrated enterprise function provides the organisational infrastructure to develop, connect, and continually improve these capabilities. Its purpose is not to centralise organisational change, but to enhance the enterprise’s ability to manage change effectively.
What Should This Function Be Called?
The function’s name matters less than a clear understanding of what it does and how it relates to the rest of the enterprise. This website uses the term Enterprise Change Office (ECO) for the integrated function that develops and sustains enterprise capability for organisational change. The rationale for using this terminology is explained here.
The Enterprise Change Office Construct
The ECO construct developed on this website, and presented in Figure 1, treats stewardship of enterprise organisational-change capability as its unit of concern, rather than managing the delivery system for individual initiatives.
Figure 1: The Enterprise Change Office Construct
The ECO construct also identifies specific roles through which organisational change is undertaken, including Sponsors, Initiative Managers, Change Architects, Change Engagement practitioners, Benefits practitioners and Business Change Managers. These roles recur in the following sections and are explored in more detail here.
ECO Capabilities
The ECO construct presented on this website defines four key capabilities that provide the enterprise-level infrastructure to govern, understand, support, and improve organisational change. This is not an exhaustive list of ECO activities. One or more of these capabilities support functions such as initiative mobilisation, assurance, portfolio analysis, and enterprise benefits oversight, rather than being separate capabilities.
Enterprise Change Intelligence
Second-Order Transformational Change should be relatively rare, but the strategic process should explicitly test whether the existing Governing Logic can still support the organisation’s strategic intent. The need to reconsider it may also emerge between formal strategic reviews as the organisation learns from changes in its environment and from experience in pursuing strategy.
As discussed earlier, Ackerman’s Transformational Change is interpreted within this framework as Second-Order Transformational Change. Making Governing Logic an explicit subject of strategic consideration increases the organisation’s ability to recognise when such fundamental change may be required.
When the future Governing Logic cannot be specified with confidence, traditional programme and project methods are insufficient. Instead, Enterprise Probes—deliberate experiments and inquiries—can explore hypotheses about necessary changes to Governing Logic. Evidence and learning help refine or support these hypotheses. Well-supported hypotheses become Change Propositions, which, once understood, can move toward delivery through change initiatives. Figure 4 illustrates this process.
1. Trigger
A strategically significant signal that calls into question whether the existing Governing Logic remains fit for purpose. This corresponds to Ackerman’s idea of a wake-up call – recognition that incremental adaptation may no longer be sufficient and that fundamental organisational assumptions may need to be reconsidered.
1 of 72. Develop Hypotheses
Form plausible hypotheses about how the organisation’s Governing Logic might need to change. These describe possibilities to be explored and tested, rather than a predetermined future state.
2 of 73. Enterprise Probes
Conduct bounded, hypothesis-driven experiments to explore how the Governing Logic might need to change. Their purpose is to generate evidence and learning, not to implement a predetermined solution.
3 of 74. Evidence and Learning
Gather and interpret evidence from Enterprise Probes to understand how the organisation responds. Learning informs whether hypotheses should be refined, rejected or developed further.
4 of 75. Evaluate Hypotheses
Assess the evidence to determine whether hypotheses should be rejected, refined and tested further, or are sufficiently supported to progress towards a Change Proposition.
5 of 76. Change Proposition
Translate sufficiently supported learning into a defined proposition for change. Where sufficiently understood, it can progress towards delivery through change initiatives.
6 of 7Figure best viewed on tablet or above
Figure 4: Second-Order Transformational Change
When the future Governing Logic cannot be specified with confidence, traditional programme and project methods are insufficient. Instead, Enterprise Probes—deliberate experiments and inquiries—can explore hypotheses about necessary changes to Governing Logic. Evidence and learning help refine or support these hypotheses. Well-supported hypotheses become Change Propositions, which, once understood, can move toward delivery through change initiatives. Figure 4 illustrates this process.
Managing both simultaneously requires Organisational Ambidexterity: the ability to continue operating and adapting within the existing organisational order while exploring the fundamentally different order that may be required for the future.
The National Health Service in England illustrates the kind of situation in which Second-Order Transformational Change might need to be considered. Many of its challenges can undoubtedly be addressed through First-Order System Change. Persistent questions about how healthcare is organised, funded, governed and delivered may, however, require examination of assumptions underlying the existing organisational order. The diagnostic question is therefore not whether the NHS needs larger programmes successively, but whether its existing Governing Logic can still support what society requires of it.
Governance & Decision Support
First-Order System Change is likely to recur and, in many organisations, is effectively continuous. It adapts Culture, Business Model, Value Chain, and Operating Model within the existing Governing Logic.
As discussed earlier, Ackerman’s Developmental and Transitional Change are interpreted within this framework as forms of First-Order System Change. That distinction, however, does not adequately differentiate First-Order Change across the management challenges created by complicatedness and complexity. Here:
- Complicatedness is the degree to which change is difficult because of the number, variety and interdependence of elements that must be understood, designed, coordinated and implemented. Complicatedness can generally be addressed through analysis, expertise, decomposition and planning, even where doing so is demanding.
- Complexity is the degree to which change is difficult because interactions between elements, people and their environment produce responses and outcomes that cannot be confidently predicted in advance. Complexity therefore requires feedback, learning, and adaptation rather than relying solely on analysis and predetermined plans.
Practically, the distinction can be stated simply:
“Complicatedness concerns how difficult the change is to analyse and coordinate; complexity concerns how difficult its consequences are to predict.”
This distinction is important because it prevents complexity from being equated with ‘big and difficult.’ For example, a large ERP implementation may be highly complicated but not complex. Conversely, a modest change involving many autonomous actors and unpredictable responses can be highly complex without being complicated.
Rather than using the terms “Developmental” and “Transitional”, this website suggests that organisations categorise First-Order System Change along a continuum of four categories as shown in Figure 5.
Figure best viewed on tablet or above
Figure 5: Continuum Of Categories Of First-Order System Change
The boundaries between these categories are not universal thresholds but form a continuum based on each organisation’s assessment of the change, its environment, and capabilities. Their purpose is to guide governance and approach decisions, not to create a hierarchy of importance. The organisation should clearly communicate the rationale for categorisation.
Category I change, with low complication and complexity, focuses on improving or developing existing conditions. Category II involves more substantial movement toward a future state that remains sufficiently knowable to design and plan. Category III, with higher complexity, requires ongoing feedback, learning, and adjustment. Category IV combines high complication and complexity, requiring extensive coordination while recognising that not all interactions and outcomes can be predicted.
Importantly, Transformational Change is outside this categorisation. Increasing complicatedness or complexity does not turn First-Order System Change into Second-Order Transformational Change. The latter is a different order of change because the Governing Logic itself is reconsidered.
Practice Development & Knowledge Stewardship
Leadership & Capability Development
ECO Capabilities
The ECO construct presented on this website defines four ECO-stewarded practices: Initiative Management, Change Architecture, Change Engagement, and Benefits Management. A practice is considered ECO-stewarded if it focuses on organisational change, is distinct and repeatable, supports enterprise-wide development and learning, and lacks a more suitable organisational home within the enterprise.
Stewardship includes maintaining and developing the principles, methods, role expectations, guidance, practitioner capability, and organisational learning for each practice. ECO personnel do not perform all related work; Change Initiatives and other organisational change activities mainly implement these practices.
Initiative Management
Second-Order Transformational Change should be relatively rare, but the strategic process should explicitly test whether the existing Governing Logic can still support the organisation’s strategic intent. The need to reconsider it may also emerge between formal strategic reviews as the organisation learns from changes in its environment and from experience in pursuing strategy.
As discussed earlier, Ackerman’s Transformational Change is interpreted within this framework as Second-Order Transformational Change. Making Governing Logic an explicit subject of strategic consideration increases the organisation’s ability to recognise when such fundamental change may be required.
When the future Governing Logic cannot be specified with confidence, traditional programme and project methods are insufficient. Instead, Enterprise Probes—deliberate experiments and inquiries—can explore hypotheses about necessary changes to Governing Logic. Evidence and learning help refine or support these hypotheses. Well-supported hypotheses become Change Propositions, which, once understood, can move toward delivery through change initiatives. Figure 4 illustrates this process.
1. Trigger
A strategically significant signal that calls into question whether the existing Governing Logic remains fit for purpose. This corresponds to Ackerman’s idea of a wake-up call – recognition that incremental adaptation may no longer be sufficient and that fundamental organisational assumptions may need to be reconsidered.
1 of 72. Develop Hypotheses
Form plausible hypotheses about how the organisation’s Governing Logic might need to change. These describe possibilities to be explored and tested, rather than a predetermined future state.
2 of 73. Enterprise Probes
Conduct bounded, hypothesis-driven experiments to explore how the Governing Logic might need to change. Their purpose is to generate evidence and learning, not to implement a predetermined solution.
3 of 74. Evidence and Learning
Gather and interpret evidence from Enterprise Probes to understand how the organisation responds. Learning informs whether hypotheses should be refined, rejected or developed further.
4 of 75. Evaluate Hypotheses
Assess the evidence to determine whether hypotheses should be rejected, refined and tested further, or are sufficiently supported to progress towards a Change Proposition.
5 of 76. Change Proposition
Translate sufficiently supported learning into a defined proposition for change. Where sufficiently understood, it can progress towards delivery through change initiatives.
6 of 7Figure best viewed on tablet or above
Figure 4: Second-Order Transformational Change
When the future Governing Logic cannot be specified with confidence, traditional programme and project methods are insufficient. Instead, Enterprise Probes—deliberate experiments and inquiries—can explore hypotheses about necessary changes to Governing Logic. Evidence and learning help refine or support these hypotheses. Well-supported hypotheses become Change Propositions, which, once understood, can move toward delivery through change initiatives. Figure 4 illustrates this process.
Managing both simultaneously requires Organisational Ambidexterity: the ability to continue operating and adapting within the existing organisational order while exploring the fundamentally different order that may be required for the future.
The National Health Service in England illustrates the kind of situation in which Second-Order Transformational Change might need to be considered. Many of its challenges can undoubtedly be addressed through First-Order System Change. Persistent questions about how healthcare is organised, funded, governed and delivered may, however, require examination of assumptions underlying the existing organisational order. The diagnostic question is therefore not whether the NHS needs larger programmes successively, but whether its existing Governing Logic can still support what society requires of it.
Change Architecture
First-Order System Change is likely to recur and, in many organisations, is effectively continuous. It adapts Culture, Business Model, Value Chain, and Operating Model within the existing Governing Logic.
As discussed earlier, Ackerman’s Developmental and Transitional Change are interpreted within this framework as forms of First-Order System Change. That distinction, however, does not adequately differentiate First-Order Change across the management challenges created by complicatedness and complexity. Here:
- Complicatedness is the degree to which change is difficult because of the number, variety and interdependence of elements that must be understood, designed, coordinated and implemented. Complicatedness can generally be addressed through analysis, expertise, decomposition and planning, even where doing so is demanding.
- Complexity is the degree to which change is difficult because interactions between elements, people and their environment produce responses and outcomes that cannot be confidently predicted in advance. Complexity therefore requires feedback, learning, and adaptation rather than relying solely on analysis and predetermined plans.
Practically, the distinction can be stated simply:
“Complicatedness concerns how difficult the change is to analyse and coordinate; complexity concerns how difficult its consequences are to predict.”
This distinction is important because it prevents complexity from being equated with ‘big and difficult.’ For example, a large ERP implementation may be highly complicated but not complex. Conversely, a modest change involving many autonomous actors and unpredictable responses can be highly complex without being complicated.
Rather than using the terms “Developmental” and “Transitional”, this website suggests that organisations categorise First-Order System Change along a continuum of four categories as shown in Figure 5.
Figure best viewed on tablet or above
Figure 5: Continuum Of Categories Of First-Order System Change
The boundaries between these categories are not universal thresholds but form a continuum based on each organisation’s assessment of the change, its environment, and capabilities. Their purpose is to guide governance and approach decisions, not to create a hierarchy of importance. The organisation should clearly communicate the rationale for categorisation.
Category I change, with low complication and complexity, focuses on improving or developing existing conditions. Category II involves more substantial movement toward a future state that remains sufficiently knowable to design and plan. Category III, with higher complexity, requires ongoing feedback, learning, and adjustment. Category IV combines high complication and complexity, requiring extensive coordination while recognising that not all interactions and outcomes can be predicted.
Importantly, Transformational Change is outside this categorisation. Increasing complicatedness or complexity does not turn First-Order System Change into Second-Order Transformational Change. The latter is a different order of change because the Governing Logic itself is reconsidered.
Change Engagement
Benefits Management
Contributing Enterprise Practices
The ECO construct deliberately distinguishes ECO-Stewarded Practices from Contributing Enterprise Practices. The ECO does not, and should not, contain all the specialist expertise required for organisational change. Change Initiatives and Enterprise Probes draw on established practices across the enterprise, depending on the Business Need, affected Enterprise System elements, and the nature of the change. Examples include Finance, Human Resources, Technology and Data, Risk, Legal, and Commercial, though this list is not exhaustive.
It is important to distinguish between stewarding organisational-change practices and incorporating specialist expertise. The ECO enables relevant Contributing Enterprise Practices into organisational change, while the Initiative Manager, Change Architect, and other initiative roles integrate their contributions according to their respective responsibilities.
Contributing Enterprise Practices are considered in further detail here.
Two Orders of Organisational Change
If required capabilities can be developed by adapting the Enterprise System while the Governing Logic remains appropriate, the organisation is undergoing First-Order Change. This changes operations without altering core principles and assumptions.
If the Governing Logic is no longer appropriate or its suitability is uncertain, the organisation faces Second-Order Change. This involves reconsidering the principles shaping the Enterprise System. Second-Order Change does not assume the Governing Logic will change; instead, exploration and learning determine if and how it should change.
This distinction is not based on scale, cost, complexity, or disruption. In this framework, it depends on the organisational level of change. Large, complex changes may still be First-Order, while Second-Order Change involves questioning the Governing Logic. The two constructs are explored here.
Organisational Change Enables Strategy Realisation
Organisational change and strategy realisation are closely linked but distinct. Organisational change adapts capabilities, while strategy is realised by using those capabilities in Operational Continuity.
Designing, developing, or implementing a new capability alone does not realise strategy. A new operating model, platform, or service becomes strategically significant only when it is used operationally and contributes to the organisation’s objectives.
This distinction does not depend on the formal end of a change initiative. Changed capabilities may enter Operational Continuity gradually, with benefits emerging as they are used, not just when the initiative concludes.
The boundary between organisational change and Operational Continuity is conceptual, not strictly chronological. Organisational change adapts capability; Operational Continuity involves its ongoing use.
Organisational change adapts capability. Operational Continuity uses that capability to execute strategy and deliver value.
What Is Organisational Change Management?
If organisational change defines what is being adapted and why, organisational change management addresses how to achieve that adaptation.
Within this framework Organisational Change Management is:
“The coordinated leadership, governance, design, delivery and change engagement through which organisational change is conceived, directed, implemented, adopted and sustained.”
Organisational change management is an enterprise activity that integrates leadership, decision-making, specialist practices, and delivery capabilities to achieve change. It is not limited to a single role, function, or practitioner.
Various practice areas contribute expertise to this activity. In this framework, these include Initiative Management, Change Architecture, and Change Engagement, all integrated and supported by the Enterprise Change Office.
Different Meanings of Change Management
The term Change Management has varying scopes. Consider how these differences affect what is included in the practice areas.
Explore The Distinction
Bringing the Definition Together
Organisational change adapts the Enterprise System and, where necessary, its Governing Logic to provide the capabilities the organisation requires.
Those capabilities enable strategy realisation through their use in Operational Continuity, while Organisational Change Management coordinates how the change is brought about.
