One after another they stood up and announced how long they'd been at the University, which started off at around four years and went upward from there... and how small a proportion of the people present they knew. Which hovered around five percent.
I was startled. It was a communication event. These were workgroup leaders, people of some seniority, rather than worker trolls changed up in dungeons under the ground. They have access to email, telephones, and their offices are not padlocked. They're free to walk outside to get a cup of coffee or post a letter. Yet... they didn't know people who worked in their own, or related, fields, often in buildings whose shadows chilled their smoking corners.
Recently another invitation crossed my desk - an invitation to a Khuluma workshop. In the text was stated that the intention was to compile workshop groups which had some diversity, and were not merely a group of people who all knew each other. Yet, of the two dozen or so names of the addressees, only about two were unfamiliar (this despite organisational level, location, work focus and probably every other grouping factor indicating a wide spread). Inevitable, perhaps, that such a group would consist largely of "the usual suspects". But illustrative of something else.
When it comes to work, it seems, one can go for years without ever meeting anyone beyond your very direct organisational unit. In fact, doing so might even be subversive, given that the University is structured into Business Units whose relationships to each other are of competition rather than cooperation.
When it comes to human matters, like Transformation, however, the opposite dynamic is at play. Communication and networking beyond one's organisational entity are obligatory, and one finds common purpose and alliance with others scattered all over the institution. People actually *talk* to each other.
Change Management, and Transformation, both involve change, but only one involves communication. Interesting, that.