Change and Transformation. What is the difference?

Miascape believe there is a huge difference. If you study the weekend papers you will see companies and public sector organisations committing to change not to transformation. At Miascape we believe that words need to be defined before you can truly understand what they mean. For example, a conversation may go like this:

"What was your weekend like?"

"It was great, and you?"

"Yeah great too"

What does great mean? To me it means driving through the highlands of Scotland on my motorbike in the sunshine and stopping to admire the views. To you it might mean sitting reading a novel in your garden all weekend sipping chilled wine. So we know that great means good, but this is in our own context. However in a shared context we have to dig deeper to understand what is behind these words.

So what is change? Well to Miascape we define change as analagous to moving the ingredients of a recipe around on a table. You can move them to different positions, but once you leave the room there is always the chance that someone will walk in and put them purposefully or randomly back to where they started.

So what is transformation? To Miascape we define transformation as baking the cake. Transforming the ingredients into something new. What's more the cake can never purposefully or randomly go back to being the ingredients.

Most organisations we are involved with recognise this difference and use the language of transformation not change when they want to do something different.

Miascape is something different.