One of the first dates I went on with my now wife, was to go and see Fuerza Bruta, a theatre experience that is an incredible assault on the senses and well worth going to see. One of my biggest memories of the occasion was a man running at full speed on huge conveyor belt, being pelted with a moving wall of boxes.

I was reminded of this after a few conversations I had this week I had on how corporate technology can “keep-up” and “get-ahead” with their peers. I can imagine that anybody who has this task of “keeping up” could well feel like the person in the picture. However, I thought it was a useful metaphor for organisational change.

In this article I suggest that organisations that want to change need to do so by adding change capabilities in addition to those of service provisioning and product fulfilment. These capabilities are:

1) Adapting Innovation

2) Organisational Change

3) Decommissioning

For these change capabilities to be effective; however, I use the metaphor of people running on a conveyor belt at the same pace, in the same direction to make the point that any change needs to be coordinated across the whole organisation. I suggest that the Business Relationship Management role is key to providing that coordination role by carrying out Strategic Scoping, Portfolio Management, Value Realisation and Relationship Management activities.