In our account of the successful transformation of a software development unit at Ericsson, we show how a combination of trial-and-error learning processes, operating at the management and employee levels, can bring about routine change. In developing this explanation, we refer to the off-line/online search dichotomy as a basic way of distinguishing between how routines are tried out at management and employee levels. Furthermore, we suggest a way in which the performative view of routines can be linked to the teleological and life cycle modes of change at the level of management and employees, respectively. As a result, we arrive at a view of routines as both “inherently changeable” and directional and suggest how the combined use of managerial- and employee-level processes makes it possible to gain the benefits associated with each of them, while at the same time mitigating the effects of their shortcomings.