Not Every Change Is the Same. Ask Which Side You Are On.

We talk about change as if it were one thing.

Leading change. Driving change. Managing change. We praise the people who make it happen and criticise the people who stand in its way. Change has become a virtue in itself, something to be admired simply because it moves.

But two people can bring about change of the same size, at the same time, in the same place, and be doing two entirely different things.

The difference is not in the change. It is in who the change is for.

Those who brought change for others

There are people who brought change for the benefit of others.

They sacrificed themselves so that others could live a better life. So that people who had been shut out could have equal opportunity. They fought for human values and for the dignity of people, often at great cost to their own comfort, safety and standing.

What they gained personally was rarely the point. In many cases, they gained very little. Some lost a great deal. The change was never meant to be theirs to keep.

Those who brought change for themselves

There are others who brought change to benefit themselves.

They manipulated. They twisted the truth. They misinformed people, using every tactic and strategy available. They spoke the language of a cause, and often spoke it very well.

But underneath the language, their motive remained the same: personal benefit, presented as the benefit of the mission.

From the outside, the two groups can look almost identical. Both are energetic. Both are persuasive. Both gather followers. Both can point to things that have genuinely changed. In the moment, it is not always possible to tell them apart.

Time is the judge

Both brought change. One for the benefit of others, and the other for their own benefit.

And with time, it was only a matter of time, the truth became vibrantly clear.

People took the change into their own hands. They made the first group of change-makers their gods. Their names were remembered, their stories retold, their sacrifices honoured long after they were gone.

And they wiped out the second group completely. Not even their records were left in history.

That is the pattern, and it repeats. The manipulation works for a while. Sometimes for a long while. But it does not survive the people it was done to. Once they can see what really happened, and who really gained, they decide who is remembered. They are not generous to those who used them.

A familiar pattern

The same pattern plays out at a much smaller scale inside organisations.

Consider two leaders, each sponsoring a major change in their organisation.

The first takes on a difficult transformation because the people doing the work are struggling with systems and processes that no longer serve them. She absorbs the criticism when things go badly. She shares the credit when things go well. She stays through the hard middle, long after the launch photographs have been taken.

The second takes on an equally large transformation because it will look impressive on a resume. The business case is polished. The language is about staff, customers and the community. But the decisions keep landing in the same place: what makes the program look successful, and the sponsor look good, in time for the next career move.

For a year or two, both programs look similar. Both report progress. Both sponsors are praised.

Then time does its work. The first leader is still spoken about years later, by people who were not even there. Her way of working becomes the standard others are measured against.

The second leader moves on. The program is quietly unwound by those left to live with it. Within a few years, nobody mentions who started it. It is as if it never had a sponsor at all.

Nobody had to expose anything. The people affected simply saw what was true, and remembered accordingly.

Which side of change

None of this is a reason to stop pursuing change. Change is necessary, and someone has to lead it.

But it is a reason to be honest about our motive while we are leading it. The second group rarely sees itself as the second group. It tells itself a story about the mission, and the story is convincing, especially from the inside.

The question is not whether we are bringing change. It is who the change is really for. And whether we would still pursue it if our own name were left out of the record entirely.

Not every change is the same. Ask which side of change you are standing on.

The questions that remain

Here are some questions to ponder.

Think of the change you are currently leading or supporting. If you removed every personal benefit you expect from it, would you still be pushing for it?

Who will be telling the story of this change in ten years, and what will they say about why it was done?

And which side of change are you standing on today?