Change is hard. Usually harder than you ever expected. Twenty five years of experience as a professional, successful change agent have given me some insights that make change easier. My work with individuals trying to change as well as organizations leads me to look at change by thinking about three fairly distinct but inter linked agendas. By using the perspective of three agendas I can usually find a strategy in one agenda even if progress in the other agendas is stymied.

The first agenda includes all the obvious content issues in an organization. These are the areas where managers in any industry focus. The first agenda the focus of the work and the mission. For example, marketing, research and development, production, delivery, revenue, profits, value creation and constituent loyalty. These describe obviously important tasks and results in any organization. By actual survey at several industry association conventions, 97% or more of the topics focus on this first agenda.

Problems in achieving the first agenda are the typical motivators of organizational change. Likewise when we design changes they are generally described in first agenda language—services are down so we have a new effort to boost activity in the next quarter. You will know if that is a deep enough analysis, by whether or not services increase in the next quarter without producing undesired side effects. Often our efforts to change do not produce the change, even when we work very hard and are very persistent. This situation signals that it is time to drop down into the second agenda and look for help there.

While the first agenda focuses on the work the second agenda focuses on the organization, and the mechanisms that bring people together with resources to accomplish the organization's purpose. This agenda includes plans, strategies, structure, delegation, staffing, systems for communication, coordination and control, resource allocation methods, rewards and recognition systems both formal and informal and finally the all-pervasive culture of the organization. In the small organization the second agenda is less critical than in a medium or large one, because the intimate contact and daily interaction that is possible in the small enterprise more easily enables people to override weaknesses and design flaws in the second agenda. The second agenda addresses all group process issues e.g. how is the organization organized, what are the processes of the team, how do we structure the interaction between individuals, and most importantly, what structures and systems are in place to nurture and support change. Only 1-2% of the typical industry conference focuses on the second agenda.

Each of the elements in the second agenda acts like an auto pilot which keeps the organization on its old track even when goals and actions are taken in the first agenda. In fact increased effort on the first agenda to produce change often produces a back lash which hardens the resistance to change.

This is the same paradox many professionals experiences when they say I went into this field because I loved science (or medicine or engineering or writing) not because I loved management.

Inattention to the second agenda in your career or in your organization allows second agenda problems to grow and receive no attention until they impact the first agenda e.g. revenues in a organization or health/marriage in your personal life.

Most organizations are currently out of balance in their over emphasis on the first agenda and neglect of the second agenda. With limited resources to invest, a redistribution of resources to give more emphasis to the second agenda will produce more progress and results in the first agenda.

The third agenda addresses individual development while the second agenda has organizational development as its focus. Individual development does not mean learning more about the first or second agenda topics. It means learning more about you. Quite naturally this learning often leads to transforming the individual. Thus the second agenda focuses on changing the organization or team, the third agenda deals with individual transformation. This happens most often and most constructively when the second agenda is in good shape; in other words when the goals, roles, rules, resources and rewards of how the organization or team operates are clear, meaningful and mutually supportive. Since this is much harder to achieve in a large organization than in a small team, we more often see individual transformation nurtured in a small team. The strongest teams occur in the performing arts and in professional sports. Philip Jackson, the coach of the Chicago Bulls basketball team-a team with one of the longest winning streaks-has written deeply about how he coached a group of super stars into a super team. His book—Sacred Hoops—describes a process of personal growth and transformation as the basis of his coaching.

Max DePree—the CEO of a successful business—has written about this also in his book Leadership Is An Art. The biggest challenge in personal transformation is learning to let go of who you are to become who you can be.

Many organizations are stalled out at best and sliding down at worst because of third agenda issues. This usually occurs when a key person, such as a CEO or a senior department head has a serious blind spot. A blind spot is an area where you do not appreciate your weakness in a crucial leadership or management quality. By being blind to it or too proud to admit it you can not compensate and both the second agenda and the first agenda suffer. And no amount of corrective action in the first two agendas can resolve a serious third agenda issue. Most professional training and industry conventions have no third agenda topics on the main schedule. CEO peer discussion sessions have the opportunity to move into this arena, but I suspect most did not.

Remember, as you move from first to second agenda, it becomes dramatically harder to address the issues. Why? We all have less experience in this agenda. It is a fuzzier i.e. less clear agenda. It is more uncomfortable to address and requires more courage to address. It also requires a high degree of creativity, comfort with ambiguity, and willingness to look foolish. See the Management Briefing, "The S Curve," for an expansion of this idea.

If moving from first to second is harder by a square, moving to the third agenda is harder by the cube. That is why we wait for people to resign, or die rather than address a difficult third agenda issue. Read our Fable on The Anchor which is simply an apocryphal story completely based on the reports of over 25 business directors.

The Big Problem is that the Problem is not the Problem

Some organizations believe that they need to explore change; others (well endowed with large staffs and low performance) should be exploring change. They attend conferences on change, yet the conferences do not address the concepts, mechanics or tools of change-all of which lie in the second and third agendas. Thus the problems that organizations are experiencing will not be solved by exploring more first agenda case histories and examples. And further, attacking the problem head on will not solve the problem because that is not the problem. In other words the problem we see is not that first agenda problems are not being solved; the problem is that these deeper agendas are not being sufficiently explored much less used.

Thus when we talk about the reinvented organization of our times being flexible or fast or market driven we have training and conferences which are not flexible, fast or market driven. When we talk about listening to the customer, we have conferences and organizations which do not listen well enough.