Here's a scene I've watched in a dozen companies.
A new leader arrives. She sees the obvious problem. She proposes the obvious fix: centralize it, or decentralize it, depending on the year.
Someone older in the room goes quiet. Because they did exactly this in 2017. And it didn't take.
But nobody says so. And the change runs again.
What's the pattern?
Organizations swing. Centralize, decentralize. Build in-house, outsource. Open floor plan, offices again. If you've been anywhere longer than a decade, you've watched the pendulum go both ways and heard each swing described as a revolution.
The pendulum isn't the problem. Sometimes the answer really does change with the times. The problem is amnesia. Companies keep exquisite records of decisions: the memo, the org chart, the budget. They keep almost no record of lessons: why it stalled, who resisted and why, what it would have taken to work.
So the lesson leaves the building with the person who learned it.
I say on stage that change has a pattern, and that five thousand years of it repeat. That's true for civilizations. It's also true, on a smaller clock, inside your company. The same change comes around every seven or eight years, roughly the tenure of one leadership team. And each time, it arrives without its history.
What should leaders do now?
So, three things.
Before any big change, ask one question in the open: "Have we tried this before?" Then let the quiet person answer. That's the cheapest research you will ever do.
Write the lesson, not just the decision. One page, kept somewhere people can find it: what we tried, what happened, what we'd do differently. Not a post-mortem nobody reads. A note to the next leader.
And keep one person whose job is remembering. Every organization needs an anthropologist. Someone who knows the stories, and is allowed to tell them in the room where decisions get made.
Making the same change twice isn't stupidity. It's what happens when a smart organization forgets on purpose. You can stop forgetting.
What's the change your company has already tried once, and is about to try again?
Related: Why does every transformation feel like it's failing halfway through?
- Sam Rad, "Change Has a Pattern" keynote.
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