How can we navigate more adaptive, continuous approaches to change when our organisations still see change as a series of initiatives? What got me thinking is this graphic that the Change Management Network posted on LinkedIn. It describes a journey "from managing change as an initiative to building change capability in a continuously adaptive organisation". What I write below is not a criticism of the network. I agree that we need more adaptive capability for change and I appreciate that the Change Management Network is enabling this conversation. My question is: should we frame this as binary "from/to"? Change leaders adopting the adaptive approach promoted by the graphic will still have to continue to work with (and struggle with) most features of the "change as an initiative" approach that the graphic sets it against. In the complex systems most of us work in, this isn't a tension we can resolve. We have to hold and navigate both continuously and that won't change anytime soon. The direction of travel is towards organisations with the capability to adapt continuously. Yet the systems we work in today still fund, govern and judge change as a series of initiatives. As leaders of change, we are accountable for delivering the project in front of us. We are also the best placed people to build the adaptive change capacity our organisations will need for the evolving future. I would frame our strategic task as follows. Rather than moving away from “change initiatives” towards a different future, use them to build that future from inside the present. Five ways we can do this: 1) Hold two horizons at once. Seek to deliver what the initiative promises. At every stage, ask what the organisation will be able to do after the project closes that it could not do before. 2) Make capability part of the accountability. Work with programme sponsors to write capability outcomes into business cases, benefits plans and final reports. 3) Design for handover from day one. Share decision making with the people who will carry the change forward. Help build their skills in improvement and data and their sense of agency while the project team is still there to support them. 4) Turn governance moments into learning moments. Milestone reviews and Board papers can ask what we are learning and how we are adapting, as well as whether we are on track. 5) Connect the initiatives. Many organisations (especially in health and care) run dozens of change programmes in parallel. If we link them, share learning across them and grow a common change community, we can build adaptive capacity across the whole system. The future of change leadership is being shaped now, inside the initiatives we lead today. We want each project to leave people more able to spot problems, test ideas, take action and adapt. This isn’t “from/to”. It’s “both/and”: the initiative can become the vehicle and the adaptive capability can become the legacy. Graphic comes from a post by the Change Management Network on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/posts/change-ma…