Capacity for change
Humans are infinitely adaptable. Business change is limited only by legacy and culture. Can AI be a tool to unlock greater capacity for change?
I have a congenital defect of some kind. Sitting in a room listening to someone talk sends me to sleep. Symptoms have been there all my life. I paid no attention to teachers at school or in university lectures. I hate attending business events or listening to pitches of any kind.
It's been getting worse as I get older. So back in October 2023, sitting in a typical meeting room, listening through a routine day of a business accelerator programme, I was really struggling to keep my eyes open by early afternoon.
Then a new speaker appeared, the CFO of a large NHS Trust. I have no idea what he said. I was too busy trying to stay upright in my chair. At the end someone asked him a question. Something in his answer clicked in my brain.
He talked about the pile of business cases on his desk. All offered strong ROI. Many of them would pay back inside a year - sadly essential for funding things in the NHS. Yet he would approve no more than 10%.
Why? Because that was the limit of his organisation's capacity for change.
The NHS is not resistant to change
This insight clarified two things for me:
First, and contrary to popular opinion, the NHS is not resistant to change. It is always changing and evolving. Driven forward by staff and patients, regardless of policy or strategy.
The short term impact of severe stress on NHS resources is only the tip of the iceberg. The invisible consequence is a reduction in the capacity for change That in turn, means even less ability to cope with future strains.
The wider point about capacity has been floating in my mind ever since. It came into focus a couple of weeks ago, golfing with an old friend on the wonderful links at Royal Portrush.
My playing partner is about 10 years younger than me and still working. When I golfed with him a year ago, he told me he was planning to step away from his leadership position. This year I discovered that he has stayed in leadership but taken on a new role leading the transformation for his line of service.
That transformation was a big topic of conversation on my trip to Northern Ireland. Half the group still work in my old firm and the timing coincided with the new senior partner announcing his strategy. So change was at the front of their minds.
I heard another view a week later. Having dinner in Glasgow with another old friend who is maybe 20 years younger than me and has just taken on a big new leadership role.
Those big 4 views of change were different from those I hear in the NHS.
Everyone in the firm understands that change is a deeply embedded part of the culture. You have to keep evolving and developing or step off the bus.
Even so, the sheer scale of change felt different and challenging for everyone I spoke with.
Culture or capacity - which defines change?
So what did I learn from this?
I often think about culture in terms of change. PwC embraces change, the NHS is resistant. Scotland is slow moving and stagnant. London, San Francisco and Asia are fast moving and dynamic. Maybe these characteristics reflect capacity to change rather than mindset?
If that is true, what is the effect of top down change? Centralised strategies often fail on their own. Do they also eat up capacity for change and thus squeeze out the good? How do industrial strategy and innovation support schemes look in this mirror?
Many readers will have heard my favourite quote from Keynes before "Anything we can actually do we can afford."
Perhaps we need to start thinking about change in the same terms. Money is just a measure. The true test of investment is our capacity for change. The human race is infinitely adaptable. Meeting the challenges of demographics and climate change, grasping the opportunities of AI, or just making sure your business grows and thrives all depend on our ability to harness that capacity for change.
I read a lot about how the future will look when AI is part of our everyday lives. At the other end of the telescope, I see a lot of consultant's and experts pitching ways to prepare your business for AI. None of these things seem very credible to me and there is a yawning gap in the middle.
Could the first opportunity for AI sit in the middle. Can AI be a tool for increasing our capacity to deliver and absorb change?
Doing the next right thing
What is your capacity for change? Are you using that capacity as effectively as you could? How could you increase it? If you want to explore what that means for your business and you need a sounding board, that’s what I do every day. Please get in touch.
Thanks for reading.