Organizations, like people, have essential natures defined by their formative experiences, their beliefs, their knowledge bases and their core competences. Attempts at change that are in conflict with this core identity are often doomed to failure. Managers can learn to recognize such conflicts and initiate identity change to make their companies more adaptive. The transformation of a company’s identity is easier when key stakeholders understand the need for radical change of the organization but feel relatively secure about the continuity of its business. Thus, managers who want to help their organizations achieve substantive, but peaceful, change need to be aware of, and anticipate the possibility of, identity obsolescence just as they anticipate the obsolescence of products, systems or business strategies. By doing so, they can prepare internal and external stakeholders to cope with identity change as a normal event in an environment where strategic change may not be sufficient for survival.