The Dodo used to walk around,
And take the sun and air.
The sun yet warms his native ground –
The Dodo is not there!
Hilaire Beloc’s Bad Child’s Book of Beasts, 1896
An extinct and often ridiculed bird may seem a strange place to start a Change Menagerie. What is extinction, after all, but a failure to adapt, to change? But, unlikely as it seems, the dodo and its extinction offer interesting lessons for change leaders.
Where’s the connection? Well, a simple Web search makes it clear that change management is viewed by many as dead (or dying) – for one example see 2025: The Year Change Management Died. But Change as a discipline that’s close to death makes little sense in the light of research:
- Organizations must become change‑seeking, proactively scanning for opportunities, challenging norms, and moving early to stay ahead of disruption (HBR 2025)
- Organizations that effectively manage change are more likely to outperform their competitors – (Forbes 2025)
- When companies apply standardised change models, only 34% of employees adopt new technologies effectively, whereas tailored approaches double adoption rates to 68% (Gartner, 2022)
- Programmes focused on deployment alone have a 70% failure rate ... when adoption needs are prioritised, projects are 6x more likely to succeed (McKinsey, 2015).
So if change remains highly challenging, why is change management said to be on the verge of extinction?
Again the Dodo and its fate point to an answer. Academics seem to now agree that the dodo was not unable to adapt. Rather, they speak of a species very well-adapted to its context - versatile and agile are words used. And in that it’s evolved over time to respond to very real change challenges, we might think of change management as similarly well adapted. So, why did a flexible and well-adapted species become extinct – and why is change management seemingly threatened with extinction? Maybe the answer is the same?
Neil Gostling of Southampton University writes:
[the dodo] was adapted to its environment, and it had been doing very well… The thing that it wasn't adapted to … [was] people
Our sense is that change management’s problem is the same – a lack of adaptation to people, even where it claims the contrary. At Epion one of our foundational principles (and it’s surely glaringly obvious) is that effective change of any kind necessarily involves people changing what they do, adopting new ways of working. And if, as a result, effective change is truly about people, then we need to be truly people centric in our approach:
- Define adoption, not delivery, as the fundamental goal in change and transformation initiatives
- Understand and work on change capacity and the psychological factors underpinning it, rather than focusing on symptoms badged as ‘change resistance’
- Work relationally with those impacted, establishing trust through action, not just communicating and training them transactionally
- Face outwards to those with whom change needs to happen, rather than facing inwards and focusing on (essential) governance
And, actually, this suggests that change management is not what’s really needed. Change, understood in the light of the above, is something we look to enable and facilitate, not something we manage. So, after all, perhaps Change Management is heading towards extinction as it evolves and adapts into Change Enablement. It’s why we talk about enabling change, not managing it.
What do you think? Change management – dodo, dinosaur, or rapidly evolving?
