The business metamorphosis

In one paragraph

Transformation has three stages, and the middle one — where the old thing has been dismantled and the new one does not exist yet — is where it feels like a disaster.

Caterpillar. The business as it is. Functional, familiar, and limited by its current form.

Chrysalis. The transformation. Everything is in pieces, nothing works properly, and from the outside it looks like nothing is happening while inside it is entirely disassembled.

Butterfly. The business in its new form, doing things the old one could not.

Why the metaphor earns its place

Most transformation talk skips the middle. The chrysalis stage is genuinely awful: costs have been incurred, the old way has been disrupted, and no benefit has yet appeared. That is when the change gets abandoned and the business ends up with the worst of both.

It is the [emotional cycle of change]'s valley of despair, told as a picture instead of a graph.

How to actually use it

• Say the three stages out loud when you start. A team that expects the chrysalis behaves very differently in it.
• Budget for the middle. Transformations fail on cash and morale during the disassembled phase far more often than on the idea.

Where it breaks down

• It flatters change by making the outcome inevitable. Caterpillars reliably become butterflies; businesses in the chrysalis stage sometimes just die.

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