A recurring pattern is visible within large organisations in the way change initiatives are designed. As ambition grows, the scale of the plan usually increases. Complexity is met with more comprehensive roadmaps, more sophisticated KPI structures and carefully designed transformation programmes designed to reduce uncertainty as much as possible.

On paper, there is little to criticise. The rationale is often sound, the governance carefully designed and the approach taken is usually in line with common change models. Yet in many organisations, the actual movement lags behind the expectations formulated beforehand.

This is rarely due to lack of motivation or sense of urgency. In most cases, both managers and teams recognise that adaptation is necessary. Rather, what is at play here is that organisational change behaves less predictably in practice than programmatic logic assumes.

This creates recognisable dynamics in many trajectories: teams wait for further direction, leaders seek additional assurance before giving space, and programmes linger longer than anticipated in preparatory phases. At the same time, the external environment continues to develop unabated, often at a pace that is difficult to synchronise with classic planning cycles.

Where movement actually occurs

Anyone who follows change processes closely sees that meaningful shifts rarely originate in formal programme structures. The first signs of real progress usually arise closer to primary work, often in places where professionals are experimenting with improvements that have not yet fully crystallised.

This can manifest itself in product teams exploring new forms of value creation, in release train engineers explicitly focusing on the quality of interactions, or in CIO organisations deliberately creating space for learning alongside existing governance. Moreover, in fast-growing software companies, attention regularly shifts from feature development to more fundamental questions around pricing, positioning and value exchange with customers.

These rarely involve major breakthroughs. More often, they involve small changes in behaviour and conversation patterns that gradually accumulate into noticeable progress. Remarkably, this movement hardly ever occurs in isolation. Acceleration occurs precisely when professionals exchange experiences with colleagues and jointly explore what does and does not work in similar contexts.

The changing role of external expertise

For the role of consultancy, this development has clear implications. The need for external expertise remains undiminished, but expectations regarding the form are shifting.

Whereas traditional consultancy has long been organised around analysis, advice and implementation according to a pre-designed blueprint, organisations are increasingly looking for forms of support that strengthen their adaptive capacity. Not only by providing direction, but especially by accelerating the learning process within teams and leadership.

In an environment where technology, market dynamics and customer expectations are changing faster than planning cycles can keep up, collective learning capability is becoming an increasingly important success factor. This translates into a preference for shorter interventions, closer connection to practice and stronger connection to networks of professionals working on similar issues.

The core shift thus seems to lie less in new frameworks and more in a different view of change itself: not as a temporary programme with a clear end point, but as a continuous process of joint adjustment.

Peer-driven learning as a structural factor

Parallel to this, it is visible that many professionals increasingly derive their most valuable insights from exchange with peers. Whereas formal training courses and reports have long been dominant sources of knowledge, a growing part of the action perspective nowadays arises in dialogue with peers dealing with similar complexity.

This exchange takes place in informal networks, but also in more structured learning environments in which professionals from different organisations juxtapose experiences. In such contexts, the role of training and consultancy shifts to a supporting function within a broader learning ecosystem.

There, knowledge functions less as an end point and more as a starting point for experimentation. Change is seen less as something to be rolled out and more as an iterative process that develops in daily practice.

Implications for leaders and organisations

If this trend continues, large organisations will increasingly adapt through networks of practitioners who continuously learn and adjust, rather than exclusively through large-scale programmes.

This has direct consequences for leadership, governance and the way value creation is organised. Leaders will have to balance more often between giving direction and allowing space to emerge. At the same time, it requires explicit investments in the learning capacity of professionals, not only through formal pathways, but precisely in the day-to-day practice of cooperation and decision-making.

This shift occurs gradually and often outside the formal spotlight, but the impact on the agility of organisations can be significant.

A shifting demand for change

Perhaps the most relevant development is that the central question in many transformations is slowly tilting.

No longer exclusively: how do we implement this change in the most controlled way possible?

But increasingly, how do we ensure that our people can continue to learn collectively as reality continues to move around them?

In many organisations, this movement is already visible, albeit fragmented and not always explicitly named. Professionals seek each other out more often beyond the boundaries of their own organisations, and the need for environments where practical experience is central is noticeably increasing.

This points to a broader shift in how organisations adapt to a less predictable reality. Not primarily through the perfect plan, but through people's ability to continue to learn and adjust together.

Whether this is sufficient to structurally cope with the increasing complexity will have to be seen in the coming years. What does become visible, however, is that organisations that actively organise this learning capacity tend to adapt faster than organisations that continue to steer primarily on pre-designed change programmes.

By Sebastiaan Zuiddam, Chief Portfolio Officer at Connected Movement