Everything You Love Will Change (and That's the Point)
Most of us know Franz Kafka, the German-speaking writer from Prague.
His novels painted dark worlds of bureaucracy, alienation, and endless hierarchies.
Kafka died young, at just 40. He never married, and no kids.
And yet, one of the most tender stories about him has nothing to do with bureaucracy.
It's about a little girl's lost doll.
The story goes like this:
One day in Berlin, Kafka met a little girl crying in the park. She had lost her favourite doll.
To comfort her, Kafka returned the next day with a letter. Written not by him, but by the doll.
And he did.
Every meeting, he brought another letter, carefully describing the doll's journey.
Until, finally, he gave her a new doll.
The girl protested: "This doesn't look like my doll."
Kafka handed her one last letter:
Years later, inside the doll, the grown-up girl found another hidden note:
True or not?
Historians debate whether it really happened. The letter have never been found.
But myths endure because they capture deeper truths.
And this one does:
Change is inevitable. What matters is how we hold it.
From dolls to organizations
Most traditional companies cling to their "lost dolls":
the hierarchy, the middle managers, the bureaucracy, the job descriptions.
Even when those things no longer fit, they keep crying for what's gone.
Progressive organisations take another path.
They don't deny the loss. They write new letters. They embrace the next version of themselves.
A self-managing team doesn't resemble a manager-led team.
A flat company doesn't look anything like a hierarchy.
But that's the point: the travels change you.
From China to Barcelona
Speaking of travels...
Last week I was in Moganshan, a small mountain village in China, attending the 10th China Organization Evolution Forum.
There, I met 200+ people from across the country. All flighting for more progressive, human-centred ways of working.
A vibrant, surprising gathering filled with fresh insights and a lot of fun.
The energy was unmistakable: something big is shifting in China's workplaces.
Today, I'm writing this from Barcelona, where we hosting the 2nd Corporate Rebels Summit: our annual, members-only gathering of Rebel Cell companies from around the world.
Here, another 200+ workplace pioneers have come together for two days of real talk, bold experiments and absolutely zero corporate fluff,
Different countries. Different cultures.
But the same direction:
making work more human, more meaningful, more alive.
What all these companies, from China to Barcelona, reminded me is this:
When you transform a traditional company into a more human one, everything you once loved about it might change.
The sense of certainty.
The predictability.
The familiar structures.
The question is:
Will you cry for the doll that's gone?
Or will you write new letters and embrace the adventure?
Because love for the work, the people, and the purpose, will always return.
Just in a different form.
