Planned vs Emergent Change

Planned change is change that leaders decide on, design and steer toward a destination they can describe in advance. It usually follows a sequence of stages, each with its own activities.

The approach is rooted in the work of Kurt Lewin in the 1940s and the organization development tradition that followed. Bernard Burnes (2004) calls this body of work the planned approach to change. Later step models, such as Kotter's eight steps, share its logic.

Typical features are:

• a defined end state and success criteria;
• a sequence of stages or steps with a start and an end;
• direction set by leaders or a sponsor, often top-down;
• change treated as an episode between periods of relative stability.

Planned change is therefore a deliberate move from a known present to a chosen future.

Emergent change is change that unfolds continuously from many local adjustments, experiments and conversations, rather than from a single plan. Its direction is not fully fixed at the start; it evolves as people learn what works.

The emergent view grew in the 1980s and 1990s as a critique of planned models, seen as too linear for fast-changing environments. Three strands are often cited:

• Karl Weick and Robert Quinn (1999) contrasted episodic change, infrequent and intentional, with continuous change, ongoing, evolving and cumulative.
• Wanda Orlikowski (1996) showed, in a two-year study of one organization's use of a new information system, that significant change came from people's everyday improvisations. She called this situated change.
• Bernard Burnes (1996; 2004) reviewed the emergent approach and argued that no single approach fits every situation.

Emergent change is therefore change that is discovered in practice rather than fully designed in advance.

Planned vs emergent change is therefore a choice about how much of the future can be known in advance.

A planned approach fits when the desired end state can be clearly defined and the path to it is reasonably predictable, such as a regulatory deadline, an office move or a payroll system with fixed requirements.

An emergent approach fits when the environment shifts fast, when nobody can specify the end state in detail, or when the change depends on how people interpret new ways of working, such as building a more collaborative culture.

A useful test asks two questions. How clearly can we describe the end state? And how confident are we that the planned steps will lead there? The lower the answers, the more room the change needs to emerge.

Planned vs emergent change is therefore a contingency choice, not a matter of one approach being right.

Yes, and most real changes do combine them. A common pattern fixes the direction and the non-negotiables centrally, and leaves the detail to emerge locally.

At Brightwater Health, the board sets a fixed date to retire paper records and defines the legal and safety requirements. That part is planned. How each ward reorganizes handovers and which local shortcuts are retired are worked out by ward teams in short cycles. That part is emergent.

The change manager sequences the planned elements and sets up the feedback, pilots and forums that let the emergent ones surface and spread.

Combining planned and emergent change therefore means planning the frame and letting the content develop inside it.

Critics of planned change argue that it assumes too much stability, relies on top-down direction and struggles with fast or radical change. Burnes (2004) argues that several of these criticisms misread Lewin, whose own work was participative and iterative.

The emergent approach has its own weaknesses. Reviewers note that it is a loose collection of ideas rather than one coherent method, with less practical guidance. It can also underplay situations that need a fast, centrally directed response.

Planned vs emergent change is therefore best treated as a spectrum, with each approach correcting the blind spots of the other.