The coming decade will see radical change as universities, colleges and policy-makers worldwide adjust and respond to the demands of an increasingly complex global higher education environment. The debate about the nature of universities (Barnett, 1999; Fuller, 2005; Beaton et al, 2006) and of leadership and change within them is no longer ‘just’ a debate; understanding and thereby being able to work with multiple institutional webs of complexity is crucial to the development and enhancement of the sector. Traditional, linear, rationalist change programmes can be effective in delivering products, but may not be as effective at delivering sustainable capacity for change – what we call ‘change-ability’ – across the various inter-linked relationships that characterise higher education institutions (HEIs). Chambers et al. (2007) found that HEIs in the UK have adopted a range of approaches to organisational development and change; they argue that successful organisational development occurs in environments “in which people are more likely to be agile and fleet of foot” and where institutions are “seeded with change agents”.