There's a fundamental misconception in management about the relationship between quantum and incremental change. Given the enormous challenges facing our organizations most managers are now searching for major breakthroughs. They are looking for ways of restructuring and reshaping their activities to deliver quantum results in a quantum way. That's why the reengineering and reinvention movements have become so popular, and why so many corporations have been looking for that magic program or change initiative that will catapult them into a new situation.

The reality, however, is that putting aside the extreme cases where organizations in desperate circumstances are forced to downsize and restructure almost overnight, just like a medical surgeon may have to engage in a major amputation to save a person's life, most quantum change occurs incrementally - as a result of "high leverage" decisions and actions that push the organization in new directions and reverberate and cumulate in their effects.

Consider the following example.

A manufacturing company in the consumer goods business is facing major problems. Profitability and performance are at an all time low. New competitors are eroding the business. Costs of production in remaining niches are high and margins poor. Customers, shareholders and employees are all unhappy.

Clearly, major new initiatives are necessary. Under the fresh leadership of the new CEO, a decision is made to steer itself out of trouble by achieving world class manufacturing standards. Since the employees are the ones that have to make this happen, a decision is made to get them behind the new initiative by listening and responding to their needs. An employee survey is conducted to identify key concerns and to provide a basis for dialogue between management and staff on key problems in the workplace and the challenges facing the company.

In this new context, the first steps in restructuring are then taken. A cross-functional team of change leaders is established to plan and launch the new initiative. As they begin their work, important decisions arise. Where should the team start? Which processes should be reengineered first? What sites should be used for pilot projects? Who should be involved in detailed decision making and design?

As the team wrestles with these concerns, new "people issues" begin to surface. Employees become more fearful of the implications of the changes underway. How will they be affected? Will their jobs disappear? Is all the change really necessary? Should they continue to support the change or dig in their heels? As the rumor mill works overtime and political tensions begin to rise, the CEO decides to step in and "break the grapevine": any questions that staff want to ask can be submitted anonymously through staff representatives. Honest, prompt answers are guaranteed. The intervention is crucial in reestablishing a more open climate, and a culture that supports the redesign begins to emerge.

And so the project continues, moving from problem to problem and success to success until a genuine turnaround is achieved. Within a period of fifteen months major production processes are completely redesigned and bureaucratic structures transformed. The company has a new corporate culture fuelled and supported by major increases in job satisfaction, productivity, profitability and customer evaluations. The company succeeds in transforming itself from a struggling enterprise into a profitable and effective niche player.

The question posed by our example: Is this a case of quantum or incremental change?

In our view it is spectacularly quantum in terms of the results achieved: an exemplar of what major transformation is all about. But it's also spectacularly incremental in terms of the process through which the results were gained. Our research shows that this is the pattern in most successful change initiatives and that when we lever this insight the way opens to a completely new perspective on the management of change with dramatic consequences for management practice. In our view management writers offering "total solutions" to management problems through, for example, the reengineering or reinvention movement, have got the relationship between quantum and incremental change completely wrong. They are correct in saying that many of our organizations need to achieve breakthroughs that will deliver quantum improvements in performance, and that 5%, 10%, 15% or even 20% incremental improvements in end results are not enough. But they are wrong in projecting this desire for major breakthroughs into a search for large-scale quantum solutions, particularly of a programmatic kind. They understand the objectives or desired results of the required change, but not the process through which it can be achieved.

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