What traditional methods of change management have companies historically used? originally appeared on Quora, the place to gain and share knowledge, empowering people to learn from others and better understand the world. You can follow Quora on Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus.

Companies have historically pursued linear approaches to change management. There is no shortage of traditional methods - by some estimates there are more than 80,000 book titles on Amazon falling under the topic of “change management.” These traditional change management methods can be successful for certain types of organizational changes. Examples include incremental changes across the organization or significant changes within a specific department or process. Often traditional change management methodologies follow a step-by-step approach that has a beginning and an end.

However, the nature of digital business transformation is different because it combines high levels of scale, interdependence, and dynamism with the need to make fundamental changes to the entire organization in the service of a new strategic direction. Precisely because digital business transformation involves making big changes across multiple aspects of the business, conventional change management is ill-suited to fostering major changes in highly entangled organizations. This is why we believe that transformation leaders must orchestrate transformation. The DBT Center’s definition of “orchestrate” is “to mobilize and enable so as to achieve a desired effect.” Orchestration involves mobilizing and enabling different resources in an organization using the power of networks to achieve transformation goals. This is a very different approach than traditional, linear change management efforts. You can learn more in our book Orchestrating Transformation, and by visiting Orchestrating Transformation.

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