The Leadership Constant

Audacious Strategies for Navigating Change

Judy Morley

• Publisher: G&D Media
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781722505981
• eBook ISBN: 9781722527136
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Management

Humans have been conditioned to fear and avoid changes, but no advancement happens without it. Change is the driving factor behind all progress even though we are inherently uncomfortable with it and strive to maintain the status quo. We prefer repetitive, routine tasks with minimal energy which is why so much of our lives happen on autopilot.Comfort zones provide a sense of well-being, but change happens and we are thrust into transitions, sometimes against our will. It takes time to process the emotions and adapt to a new environment with a new set of rules and as difficult as that is for individuals, the level of complexity is multiplied in organizations. This provides specific challenges to leadership who must adapt the conscious act of leading audaciously as it is the difference between survival and failure. A leader must motivate people out of their natural preference for inertia and into a new level of excitement about making changes that they are programmed to resist. History provides excellent examples of audacious leadership strategies.Dr. Judy Morley outlines five audacious strategies, illustrated by examples from the Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg, and contemporary businesses. Each strategy is considered audacious because it didn't necessarily follow the prescribed norms and called for bold, daring action. The success of these strategies in the microcosm of the Battle of Gettysburg is reinforced by a contemporary example in the macrocosm of today's business world. If the use of these strategies can change the course of humanity, they can certainly beef up your leadership.

1 Rethinking Transitions

Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

—ROBERT GALLAGHER

Greek philosopher Heraclitus’s famous statement about change being the only constant is as true today as it was 2,500 years ago. This may not be good news for most people. Humans have been conditioned to dread, fear, and avoid changes. Throughout human history, however, changes have always brought benefits. No growth, evolution, or advancement happens without change. The evolution of social structures, businesses, governments, and institutions throughout the millennia show that change has, indeed, been constant. Moreover, change has been the driving factor behind all progress.

Change itself is neither inherently good or bad. All things are in flux—whether the rapidly multiplying cells of the body, changing seasons, shifting weather, or trending cultural movements. Everything is either growing or dying. All technological, cultural, and intellectual advancements stem from a constant energetic flow of change.

As prevalent as change is, human beings are inherently uncomfortable with it. For something so fundamental, it is paradoxical and yet axiomatic that people resist it. The reasons for resistance include biological, psychological, and cultural factors.

First, humans’ biological makeup strives to maintain the status quo. To survive, bodies seek homeostasis, which is the state of remaining the same. On the macro level, homeostasis gives the illusion of inertia. However, it is not the absence of change, but actually thousands of tiny changes happening so rapidly that they appear to be unmoving. Regardless of what’s happening beneath the surface, all appearances point to business as usual.

Additionally, human brains are wired to prefer repetitive tasks. The basal ganglia, located in the most primitive parts of the brain, enable people to perform routine tasks with minimal energy. This survival mechanism is the reason you can push a grocery cart, talk on a cell phone, avoid other shoppers, and solve a problem at work while still breathing and blinking. The basal ganglia ingrain habits so that much of your life happens on autopilot. If you’ve ever driven home from work and not remembered doing it, you know what I mean. All this biological programming seems to keep us in a rut.

Psychological factors also contribute to the human resistance to change. Comfort zones create the situations, attitudes, and sometimes physical places that feel safe, familiar, and calming. Comfort zones are a way to make sense of changes in life, creating almost- mechanistic processes to get through day-to-day existence. Parents frequently create routines for children to help them feel secure, from brushing teeth to bath time to bedtime stories.

Once you grew up, you probably not only continued these routines, but you also created more. Whether you are driving to work the same way every day, doing chores, or figuring out relationships, your comfort zones provide the feeling of mastery over your environment. The familiarity is a cornerstone to mental health and a sense of well-being.

Third, cultural factors provide barriers to change. Although Americans claim to value innovation, most prefer the status quo. Culture changes slowly, and although each generation thinks they lead a cultural revolution, each so-called revolution is ultimately coopted into the prevailing culture. No generation has a monopoly on either virtue or vice. Sexual promiscuity, violence, and the perception of decaying values are common to every era.

In the twentieth century, technological innovation masked the slow pace of cultural change. Penicillin, space travel, television, personal computers, and mobile phones gave the illusion of innovation, while racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and paternalism persisted. Lasting cultural innovations are rare. Conservative cultural forces rely on nostalgia for a past that never was, to slow the pace of cultural change.

Despite all these resistant factors, change happens. Sometimes humans instigate it, hoping for something better. More frequently, people are thrust into transitions against their will. Although the first kind of change seems like a welcome event, a long period of adjustment still occurs—almost a grieving process for the past that’s been left behind. If a change comes quickly from an outside force, however, it feels frightening and overwhelming. It takes time to process the emotions and adapt to a new environment with a new set of rules.

Therapists advise against making major life decisions after a significant change, such as starting a different job, moving to a new home, or losing a loved one. They understand that change upsets the cognitive faculties and causes stress that leads to mistakes and poor judgment.

Leadership in a Changing Organization

As difficult as change is for individuals, the level of complexity is multiplied in organizations. Rapidly changing conditions provide specific challenges to leadership. If you have picked up this book, you are probably looking for a way to lead an organization, team, or community through a time of transition. Each individual within a company must go through their personal process of adapting to change, while structures and procedures must also be evaluated, modified, or overhauled.

As with people, organizational adaptation takes place whether the change is positive—such as occurs with an expansion or new product—or negative— like layoffs or a takeover. Organizational leaders must perform a particularly tricky juggling act to be empathetic to individuals adapting to the new circumstances while also creating new policies and procedures—even as they continue to do business as usual.

In his classic book Good to Great, author Jim Collins talks about the organizational tension brought on by changes. According to Collins, any time an innovation occurs, a company must balance between preserving core values and stimulating progress. Core values are the cornerstone of every business identity and need to be honored and preserved.

Progress, however, is the mechanism for growth and maintaining a competitive edge. Since progress entails change, it is easy for a business to avoid it. Good companies lean too heavily on either preservation or progress; great companies find the perfect balance between the two.

If individuals are hardwired to resist change, and organizations even more so, why does our friend Heraclitus say it is the only constant? Anyone who has lived to adulthood realizes that change happens all the time. Change is the primary mechanism for evolution, innovation, and progress.

If you asked a caterpillar while it was spinning its cocoon, it probably would not say it was excited about the upcoming transition. It is evolutionarily driven to encase itself in a fiber prison, completely dissolve, and then regrow, cell by cell, into what looks like a different animal. Yet the change created a thing of greater beauty. The caterpillar has no choice in the matter, and, really, from the perspective of living a fulfilling life, neither do you.

Change through Audacious Leadership

How do you lead—yourself and others—through the upheaval of change? One word: audaciously. Recently, audacious has become my favorite descriptor. The definition of audacity is “bold, daring, unique, unlimited.” When changes come barreling ahead and every biological, psychological, and cultural system goes into red alert, it takes boldness and daring to meet and embrace it. Without audacity, there is no change, no progress, no growth. The conscious act of leading audaciously in the face of change is the difference between survival and failure—both for individuals and organizations.

In my years as a coach and speaker, clients come to me because they want their lives to be different. They want their businesses to be more successful, their relationships to be more fulfilling, their bodies to be healthier, and their friendships to be more authentic. In general, they want their lives to be more peaceful.

Yet when I ask what they are willing to change to get their desired result, they immediately lose their enthusiasm. I call this reaction the I-want everything-to-be-different-but-nothing-to-change syndrome. Ironically, humans crave improvement but resist change. You can’t have one without the other.

If you operate from the premise that the upheaval of transition has a lasting benefit, the next step is to see what, exactly, the benefit is. One of the greatest benefits of changing conditions is to remind and reconnect individuals and organizations with their purpose. Transitions provide an opportunity to reevaluate why you do what you do. When stripped of daily routines, conditioned behaviors, and outgrown procedures, people and companies are forced to reconnect with the passion that started them on the journey in the first place. It’s no longer enough to just be efficient since systems and tasks easily fall away. The new environment demands greater creativity to accomplish big goals.

Big changes that seem negative generally end up being enormous benefits in the long run. Most people can relate to a challenging event—like a layoff, diagnosis, or divorce—turning into a huge blessing in the long run.

Years ago, I had a business that started with great promise. I was a consultant for developers of historic real estate. In my first year, I worked with multiple clients, plenty of contracts, and new leads coming from all directions. When the real estate market crashed in 2008, the need for my services crashed as well. My business failed, and I had to get a job—something that I thought I would never do again.

Within a year, however, the new job opened a new career path that reconnected me to my higher purpose. The job created opportunities I never imagined and gave me a platform to rebuild. Furthermore, every employee I had to lay off found new jobs that were a better fit for each of them, and all of us made more money. As painful as it was to close my business and get a job, the result was so much better than anything I could have orchestrated. When my greatest fear happened, the change reinforced my purpose and provided a benefit I never dreamed of.

Experiences like this sparked my fascination with leading through change. I have a PhD in history, and as a leader, the past inspires me to see how things can work better. By looking at change through the wide-angle lens of history, transitions clearly facilitate growth and progress. In historical circles, this is called (appropriately academically) evolutionary transformation. There is a sociological theory of change called the Hegelian dialectic. Despite the stuffy name, this theory provides a powerful description of how changes breed progress.

Named after the early-nineteenth-century German philosopher Georg Hegel, the Hegelian dialectic begins with a thesis, which is the current condition, the status quo, what is. Since change is a constant, however, all situations eventually elicit a reaction, which is frequently the opposite or anti- “thesis.” The antithesis contradicts the thesis, causing intellectual and cognitive tension.

The only way to resolve the tension is to find a way to bridge the opposing sides, which leads to a syn- “thesis” of these ideas. The synthesis then becomes a new thesis, or status quo, and the evolutionary process begins again. From a historical perspective, all change is a factor of the ongoing dialectic process.

Why should you care about the abstract academic construct of the Hegelian dialectic? Because it provides uncanny accuracy to describe how things evolve. In organizations and personal lives, there is always the status quo—the thesis. Then someone gets an idea how to improve, and immediately there is a new goal that may or may not harmonize with the status quo—thus, the antithesis. The two ideas exist simultaneously until one of them ultimately gives way; a synthesis is created and becomes the new status quo, or thesis.

Here is a real-world example. Think about retail shopping. For centuries, as far back as the Middle Ages, buying things meant going to a store. Until the twenty-first century, the thesis was to drive to a location, wander around until you found what you needed, pay the merchant for it, and bring it home. Enter Amazon, the antithesis. From the comfort of your couch, you now order whatever you want and never get out of your jammies. Currently, a new synthesis is emerging, where you can shop online and pick it up in store or find what you want in a showroom and order it to be delivered. This is a perfect example of the Hegelian dialectic at work and how change drives evolution.

If all evolution comes from change, people must get over their resistance and learn to adapt. Leaders, especially, must become personally comfortable with change to move their followers through it. Leadership has many definitions, but they all include some version of influencing people to reach a desired outcome.

The Value of Practice

To reach a goal, a group or organization must inherently face changes. It takes audacious leadership to motivate people out of their natural preference for inertia and into a new level of excitement about making changes that they are programmed to resist.

1. How do you effectively lead through change when you face the dazed, frightened, automatic reactions of your colleagues and followers, as well as yourself?
2. How do you adjust your own attitude so you can lead your teams to be excited and motivated when everyone’s first impulse is to hunker down and dig in?

The answer is practice. All skills take practice. For example, consider learning the piano. You could read every book ever written about the piano, understand the working of the instrument, study the great composers, learn to read music, and memorize famous concertos. None of this would help you when asked to sit at a keyboard for the first time and play a sonata. You must practice.

Similarly, you must pra...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• 1. Rethinking Transitions
• 2. Lean Into It
• 3. Defy the Odds
• 4. Do the Unexpected
• 5. Know When to Do Nothing
• 6. Act as If
• 7. Staying Constant amid Change
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author