Every organization lives on two levels: the level of the things we see and the level of the things we don’t. The organizational life we see is made up of all of the things that involve us day to day, including strategy, goods and services, customers, policies, performance management, and much more.
It is the obvious life of the organization and where we invariably look when something needs to change. But there’s another life, the secret life of the organization. It’s where the real action is. It’s the level on which things really happen: personal responsibility, creativity, motivation, organizational learning.
The secret life of the organization is where real and lasting change takes place, but it’s also the part of the organization that’s almost always neglected. And that’s why so many changes fail!