We are in a constant state of transformation: digital, operational, cultural, AI, brand. It is hitting everyone, everywhere, all at once. It is simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting.
I’ve been a technologist for the majority of my career, moving from builder to architect to leader. I never really traded one hat for another; I simply kept adding them to the rack. With every transformation, the cycle times get tighter. The “big one-and-done” transformation is a myth. Instead, we face relentless waves of change that are essential, yet leaving a wake of enterprise fatigue in their path.
Change Debt
In the software industry, we have a name for this: Tech Debt. We know how it accrues and how to mitigate it.
However, Change Debt — the residue of constant, overlapping mini-waves of transformation— is just as real and far more insidious. As we pivot to face the AI wave, we do so battered and bruised by the ghosts of transformations past.
There is a reason startups thrive while legacy organizations struggle to keep pace with innovation. It isn’t just old code; it’s Change Debt. We live in a change-or-die world, so change we must. But the debt is coming due.
That said, here are a few takeaways that require further thought:
- Is the debt caused by the frequency of change, or the incompleteness of it? If we “think big, start small,” are we accidentally creating more debt by never finishing the small starts before the next big thing arrives?
- If tech debt lives in the servers, does change debt live in the culture? If so, is the organization’s “operating system” running too many background processes, causing the current AI change to bring everything crashing down?
- How do we acknowledge that the “bruising” isn’t a lack of will, but a physical limit of the enterprise? As a builder by nature, I see change as exhilarating, but for others, change often feels like instability. I’m not a doctor telling a marathon runner with a broken leg to “just keep running.” How do we give our employees the personal safety to raise that as a genuine concern?
