Capability vs Capacity
The Change Question: What matters most?
Caroline Kealey asked me a great question in a back-and-forth on LinkedIn, as we were discussing the (fabulous btw) Anne Gotte pod episode.
A question that kept coming up for me in listening: you were emphasizing the importance of change capacity in organizations. How do you understand the distinction between change capacity and capability? In conversation, I've found that most people use the term "capacity" when what is actually meant is "capability".
It’s amazing how, when two words sound alike, their definitions can get a little slippery and intertwined with each other. Am I using one, and meaning the other?
(This confusion also happens to me with “vegetables” and “chocolate,” but that’s a whole ‘nother thing.)
When I pause and take a breath, the differences seem clear enough.
Change Capabilities for an organization are the skills and mindsets required to be able to make progress on change. How to stay curious longer (and at scale). Managing conflict. Forgoing strategy and running small experiments. In short, how to be a change agent.
Change Capacity is the amount of juice left in the organization to make a change. It doesn’t matter how on-board your sponsor is, how excellent your strategy is, how necessary the change is, and how fantastic the training to help with capabilities is, if the change glass is already full. Pouring water into a full glass just makes for a wet carpet.
My guess is that we’re constantly drawn to discussions about capabilities (which is tricky, but tangible), and we too often skip over the need to understand capacity. (That’s why the pod episodes with Caroline Webb (audit!) and Leidy Klotz (subtract!) are so helpful.)
What’s your best wisdom on understanding, expanding, and managing change capacity? Is there someone I should interview on the pod who can help us go deeper on that?
Caroline Kealey started this, so we can end with her. Here’s an article she’s written on teasing apart the two concepts, if you’d like to go deeper.
