What does Change Management have to learn from Van Gogh?
The Van Gogh exhibition at The National Gallery in London has just closed with 334,589 visits, making it the most popular ticketed exhibition in the gallery's 200-year history.
But back in 1888 Van Gogh couldn’t sell a single painting.
At the time, the French academic painting system, taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, turned out capable painters according to a strict set of rules. Innovation was only allowed within a very narrow set of parameters. This created a plethora of competent, but forgettable, works of art.
The system was essentially a Command and Control model, with the artistic elite telling the people what good painting was.
Van Gogh, however, was adamant that his art should be meaningful to ordinary people. He used their experience and lives as the inspiration for his work. He wanted his art to be accessible to everyone.
He replaced Command and Control with Sense and Respond. He stood in nature and responded to what he sensed in the moment when making his paintings.
What can we learn from this?
Traditional Change Management doesn’t work anymore. Using top-down Command and Control approaches, where change has to be sold to employees to get their buy-in is outdated. People don’t like it.
Even the idea that you can ‘manage’ change is a comfortable illusion that the old guard are clinging on to.
Lean Change, on the other hand, democratises change. It seeks to engage everyone in the organisation impacted by change to co-create solutions that work. It uses jargon-free language that is accessible to ordinary people.
Lean Change acknowledges that in today’s complex organisations change is continually emerging. While it can’t be managed, it can be facilitated.
In Lean Change there’s no need for ‘stakeholder buy-in’, ‘communicating the why’, ‘overcoming resistance to change’, and other top-down approaches that employees loathe. No more change playbooks, or detailed change plans and roadmaps that sit on SharePoint unread.
Lean Change in the world of Change Management is like Van Gogh in late 19th century French art. It’s change by the people for the people.
Are you leaning (pardon the pun) more towards Van Gogh, or do you prefer what came before him?
Picture: The Poet's Garden (Public Garden in Arles), 1888, Van Gogh.
