Contemporary wisdom around achieving transformational change puts a microscope on the person or small group that takes on responsibility for change. This is suboptimal.

Regardless of the quality of the solution or the hard work to implement it, most efforts to change the present reality fail. Whether related to personal matters, company-level situations, or national and global needs, change is extremely hard.

Before we pursue change, the first questions to consider are: Why is change even necessary? Why is the current state what it is? The answer is always the same: someone’s or some group’s preferences put us in the current state. Until we address the gap in incentives between the stakeholders who prefer the present state and those who want things to change, no amount of solution design or coercion will produce the appropriate outcomes. To learn more, explore Chapter F2: “Embrace Change To Enable Macroevolutions, Microevolutions.” in Congruence: The Playmaker's Guide to High Value Companies.