Jon Katzenbach and James O’Toole probably know more about managing change, especially unexpected and disruptive change, than does anyone else. However different their approaches may be in certain respects, to accommodate the given circumstances, both agree that you cannot manage unexpected change unless and until you understand and can manage your organization’s status quo. Let me repeat that:

You cannot manage unexpected change unless and until you understand and can manage your organization’s status quo.

In numerous books and articles, Katzenbach has observed, “The most difficult change to achieve is to change the way people think about change.”

In Leading Change, O’Toole suggests that the greatest resistance to change is usually cultural in nature, the result of what he characterizes as “the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom.”

So what? A great deal.

Selecting change agents and charging them with developing an action plan is usually an exercise in futility. Why? Because the first step should be to measure the nature and extent of the status quo and identify those most likely to defend it.

Meet with them and solicit their opinions as to what throughout the given enterprise needs to be changed. If they had a magic wand and could change anything, what would they change first? And then?

I agree with John Kotter and Gary Hamel as well as with Katzenbach and O’Toole: Change initiatives are worthless (if not counter-productive) without buy-in, a sense of urgency, at all levels and in all areas. Encore:

You cannot manage unexpected change unless and until you understand and can manage your organization’s status quo.