More and more my core work appears to be moving in the direction of Change Management, whether this is in terms of learning and development, business development, project management, organization design, or software development. Previously I wrote a brief post titled "What is Change?" where I started to look at one aspect of change through the filter of Bateson's levels of learning. Of course there are many more aspects to this topic, and I'll look at a couple of those in this post: Types of change and motivation.

Types of Change

Change can usefully be categorized along two main axes: scope of change and timescale. Change can be radical, incremental or continuous, rapid or slow. Slow change includes adaptation, continuous improvement or even equilibrium states. Rapid incremental or continuous change is sometimes a stated goal or official value of an organization, and may indicate rapidly changing external conditions or internal system drivers. Rapid radical change can be characterized as a tipping point, shock or state change.

Scope can help us define the system boundary or field within which change takes place. Further, change is sometimes self-replicating or cascades to effect other change, as in a domino effect. Also related to scope is a scale of orderliness, from precise, methodical and controlled to chaotic or unmanageable change.

Additionally, the timescale aspect can be broken down further. Change can be repetitive, cyclical or directional. Some change is reversible, and some is not. Some change is reciprocal between parties, as in exchange. The rate of change can itself change based on linear, non-linear, step or complex functions, shifting between rapid and slow.

In short, this attempt to enumerate types of change suggests that change is itself an emergent property or dimension of systems. This gives us a useful language, conceptual set of tools and filters for talking about and managing change.

Motivation

What initiates change? Motivation is typically divided into intrinsic (internally generated) or extrinsic (externally generated). Motivation suggests that some internal threshold is exceeded, either by internal or external sources. This creates a signal to other parts of the system generating either positive feedback pushing the system further from equilibrium (as with growth in living systems) or generating a controlling or governing negative feedback change to bring the system back toward equilibrium (as in sweating to lower body temperature).

In reality, these categories are difficult to define precisely as most change involves signals across one or more system boundaries and depends on the arbitrary definition of such boundaries. Jay Forester would say that causes (of change) are ultimately found in the relational structure, rules and policies of a system, which may or may not be wholly defined internally. Again, change would appear to be a property of the relations, structure, integrity and operating policy of the system. The mechanism by which internal thresholds are set and maintained is also mysterious.

From a human standpoint, individual motivation can be mapped to Maslow's Hierarchy, whether intrinsic or extrinsic.Whether this applies also to human groups or super systems remains to be seen. Now that we have a framework and language for talking about change, we can take up this discussion in a future post.