" Everything has to change so that nothing changes ," says the main character of the novel and film The Leopard, in order to reassure his aristocratic friends that the advent of the Republic will not really destabilize their position in society.
This is what anthropologist Gregory Bateson calls a level 1 change! Nothing to do with the level 2 change. We explain everything about the different levels of change.
Change as a learning process
It was in his book Towards an Ecology of the Mind, published in 1972, that Bateson distinguished between different levels of change.
It should be noted to begin by noting that for Bateson, the notions of change and learning are closely linked, if not outright interchangeable : he sees change as a process of acquiring knowledge and behavior. To change is to change one's point of view (like one who acquires new knowledge), to change one's ways of doing things (such as one who is training in new know-how), to change one's postures (such as one who deploys his agility), to change one's modes of interaction (such as one who broadens his or her lines of communication), to change one's position in the environment (such as one who matures his situational intelligence)...
Also, change requires the same intensity of effort as learning. And above all, it requires an understanding of the psycho-cognitive mechanisms that promote or hinder learning from those who manage change .
Change as a consequential process... Or not !
As learning is supposed to transform the individual, the change must have consequences on reality. But it doesn't work all the time. Some changes have this paradoxical ability to... These are called homeostatic changes or level 1 changes.
When change is not about what needs to be changed
Often caused by a situation of discomfort or even crisis, these changes result in adjustments to certain modalities identified as unsatisfactory. For example, when there is a bad atmosphere in a team, it is attributed to a low level of conviviality and to management's inadequacies in the ability to get everyone to cooperate. So, we decide to install rituals of conviviality at the same time as we offer coaching to management and " living and working together " workshops to employees. It seems to be working : people talk to each other, they are benevolent, they are willing to participate in collective projects. But then the conditions become stressful and then, relationships become tense, behaviors (again) become individualistic, the atmosphere deteriorates until it returns to the same point as before. The changes have not changed anything. Often, the ineffectiveness of the measures taken for change is due to a poor assessment of the situation and the real causes to be addressed.
When the actors of change fail to take ownership of it
But it can also happen that, despite a good analysis of the situation, the change produces no other effects than to reproduce a state similar to the one that preceded it. In this case, the right answers were provided but their appropriation by the stakeholders did not work. So, these parts have adapted to " change the situation " but in reality, they bypass the transformative device to find a comfort zone.
Let's take an example : corporate governance needs to diversify, in particular to achieve parity objectives. A good analysis of the situation was made : to attract women to positions of responsibility, the governance in place must change its criteria for assessing leadership and its ways of operating. The men who are in place all agree on the principle : gender diversity is a source of performance, parity is a necessity and it will be good for everyone to change the culture of power in the organization. But in practice, the new modalities that are supposed to allow women to come to power really bother the men in power : they question their legitimacy, they challenge their habits, they question their visions and even their values. So, while maintaining a discourse of adherence to parity and adopting a certain discipline regarding the practices required by the transformation plan, they create a kind of " off " CoDir: they discuss strategic issues among themselves, informally and without malice, so that they arrive at the meeting having already formulated a shared vision and built alliance systems by self-interest. A bit like before, but it's less visible! Here, the ineffectiveness of change is to be attributed to the insufficient support of the transformation process in its systemic dimensions, i.e. simultaneously playing on the posture of individuals, collective dynamics and organizational culture.
Level 2 Change: A Paradigm Shift
For change to produce transformations, it must deeply affect the system. This is what Bateson calls the Level 2 change.
This type of change aims to modify the dynamics that govern unsatisfactory situations. Let's take the example of our mainly male Executive Committee, which is rather well disposed to parity but struggles, in reality, to play the game. In a change of level 2, it will not be enough to appoint women leaders and invite them to the meetings of the body, but it will be necessary to look at the whole issue of the self-interest of men in the organization. Ask yourself as many (sometimes disturbing) questions as : what promotes this self-isolation, what are the signs of recognition that are manifested in it, what makes it comfortable, what advantages do those who are in it find, how is this self-isolation also recomposed in the informal space-times of corporate life, etc. ? And it is by answering these questions with solutions that make the temptation of self-isolation more uncomfortable than participation in the parity movement that we will obtain effective parity.
The change of level 2 is therefore the one that allows us to reach an " after " that does not leave room for the recomposition of the " before " that we wanted to get rid of. It necessarily gives rise to learning phases, so that the buy-in of stakeholders and the alignment between intentions, practices and results operate simultaneously.
Some examples to distinguish level 1 and level 2
Finally, here are a few examples to remember Bateson's contributions.
When it comes to climate change. Replacing the combustion engine car with the electric car by driving the same number of kilometres/year (or even more, at the risk of the Jevons Paradox) is a level 1 change. Diversifying your transport methods and reducing your overall journeys is a level 2 change.
In terms of sharing domestic tasks. Moving from a situation where one person does almost nothing and the other almost everything to a situation where the one who does almost everything distributes tasks to do to the other, is a level 1 change (and a mental load for the one who delegates). For everyone to take full responsibility for the management of the household's affairs is a level 2 change.
In terms of remote management. Moving from an on-site work situation to a remote work situation where the same meetings take place face-to-face or by video, is a level 1 change. Making the diversification of workplaces a project for the global transformation of working methods is a level 2 change.
