If Nothing Ever Changed...

I guess there is plenty to learn about change using the metaphor of the butterfly - it is the ultimate change after all. You start off life as a caterpillar, do some funky stuff in a pupa, and emerge to really spread your wings and fly. Now, I don't know much about lepidoptera (it's Greek to me) but you must admit caterpillars do seem to handle forced change pretty well.

Butterfly World, near Stellenbosch, is an awesome place. It's a different world, with hundreds of varieties of butterflies hatching and fluttering about in this tropical (read humid) atmosphere.

If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies. ~Author Unknown.

The thing that strikes me is that there are so many different types of butterflies. There is no mold for change, it will always be a different experience for each of us, and we don't all emerge looking the same. Accepting change may lead you to something wonderful and unexpected.



This is not just about change, this is about transition. In a conversation today I was reminded that I do transition. I appreciate the journey from a current place to another way of being, with all the learning along the way. I don't believe transition is given enough attention, especially in organisational change. In my experience the starting point for change in many organisations is the butterfly, and if you can't be that then you are 'not committed'. There's not much thought given to the transition, the journey, that we must take before we can inhabit the new space.

If nothing ever changed, there'd be no butterflies... Perhaps a way forward is to practice looking for 'the best of' in change. Ask different questions. What could you be? How would you like to emerge? What can you do now to ensure that happens?