We were coming to see organisational change and learning as dynamic and individualised process. And we were beginning to find metaphors from biology and geology particularly appropriate to capture the essence of the change process. Perhaps it helped that I was once a geologist. In a nutshell we had concluded that the process of organic evolution in a dynamic ecosystem provides the paradigm with which to understand organisational adaptation, both in general and in the specific case of our own experience. Contrary to popular misconception evolution is not a process of gradual steady state change but is instead the organic response to punctuation of a normal equilibrium.
Similar dynamics exist in organisations.
Big bangs in the HQ are one way to do it, literally as in the case above, or metaphorically. There may however be one basic process. After a year of raised tension each operating centre in the company was charged with making, over the ensuing three years, a breakthrough in its operating margin. The details do not matter. Every operation achieved it in under two years, each in its own way, with the help of whatever advisers it choose to employ.