Are we any good at making radical changes when we need to?

I've always been fascinated by the British 7 Up documentary series.

The series began in 1964, following 14 children from different backgrounds. Every seven years, the cameras returned, all the way through to 70 Up.

I've followed the series as part of my interest in how people and organisations navigate change.

What strikes me in this series is how much life changes over each seven-year period for each participant. But also, how much of it doesn't.

The children/adults experience marriage, divorce, career changes, relocations, financial challenges, illness, bereavement and enormous changes in the world around them.

You can see in the series how individuals adjust, cope and keep going when challenges by life's challenges.

The participants do experience change, sometimes dramatically.

But here's the most interesting part - much of that change happens within a life trajectory established from an early age. You can see change, lots of it, but you don't see a fundamental shift in the life trajectory itself.

There is also a remarkable continuity in their lives.

Although people's circumstances change enormously, something of their underlying personality seems to persist. The noisy child remains noisy; the shy child remains shy; the thoughtful child remains thoughtful.

So I ask - is this therefore how change works for most people and organisations?

We get on a trajectory, make adjustments along the way but mostly stay on the same track in our beliefs and outlook. Change is certainly visible but the impact is minimal since we stay on the same track or trajectory.

Turning to leadership, does this model apply to how organisations are led? Do organisations stop and ask:

Is this still the track we need to be on? Are we making progress or just tinkering with the same old business?

In my time as an executive leader, I've seen organisations respond much the same way as individuals. With adjustments and tinkering.

They introduce:

New technology.

New structures.

New processes.

New strategies.

New leaders.

They show lots of movement. What's more, it's celebrated as evolution or transformation, but is it?

What I notice is that often the fundamental assumptions and beliefs about customers, work, policies, decision-making, performance and even what the organisation exists to do remain unchanged.

The operating environment changes. The organisation adjusts. And the train keeps moving along the same trajectory. Then, they get stuck, e.g. no productivity.

Perhaps this is where leadership matters most.

The role of the leaders isn't simply to keep adjusting the organisation to what is happening around it. It's to step back and ask:

Has the world changed enough for us to change where we're going and what we're doing?

This takes us back to the topic of evolution. For me, evolution is about having the leadership capacity and culture to continually learn, question and evolve as the world around us changes.

Adjustments are useful but should not replace evolution if the goal is to survive and thrive.