Transformation — whether in business or in our personal lives — is an unhelpful ambition. Here are four reasons why:

1. The bigger the change the greater the resistance.

Resisting change is natural for most people in most circumstances. There is no bigger form of change than transformation, so it provokes the greatest opposition. The great strategist B. H. Liddell Hart skewered this problem beautifully when he wrote that “The direct assault of new ideas provokes a stubborn resistance, thus intensifying the difficulty of producing a change.” 

2. It is unrealistic.

Yes people do transform and so do companies. But we only hear about these transformations because they make the news, and they only make the news because they are outlier events. In reality most attempts to transform fail. We're better off pursuing less grandiose strategies that have a higher chance of success. 

3. It’s probably unnecessary.

Let’s be honest: do we need to transform or do we just need to improve? Probably the latter, and attempting that instead alleviates a lot of stress and pressure, reduces complexity and generally lends itself to pragmatism.

4. It’s unnatural.

Look around you at how most change happens. Two words: evolution and compounding. Small, consistent changes over long periods of time are where exceptional performance and growth come from, not seismic changes. Becoming an overnight success usually takes a decade of consistent effort. In reality getting 1% better every day is the path to greatness, not attempting to make a 1000% change in one transformative swoop. 

Don't aspire to transform, aspire to continually improve. You'll achieve far more this way.

#strategy #transformation

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