Monthly Archives: June 2017

Dissatisfaction Times Vision Times First Steps Must Be Greater Than the Resistance

The equation that drives change is simple:

Dissatisfaction times Vision times First Steps must be greater than the Resistance to the impact of all three combined or else change efforts falter.

There are plenty of dissatisfied people in your workplace, your work group, or even just your organization.

There are people who insist that providing negative feedback is the only way to encourage organizational growth and they provide it liberally.

There are people who have been dissatisfied for years in your organization; who have made brief, or even faltering, attempts at change, but have been stymied and have now surrendered.

There are people inside your organization who claim they are dissatisfied, but who are mimicking the sounds of dissatisfaction as a political power move to angle for a better position at the organizational table.

There are people with vision in your workplace, your work group, and your organization. But this vision is hazy, or they are easily distracted by the next “hot” leadership initiatives, or their vision can be compromised with just a little more money or promotion.

There are people who take first steps and attend training, workshops, and seminars.

They read books and articles, combing the internet for advice and guidance about how to overcome the organizational ennui that holds back change.

There are people who take the same first steps, but their enthusiasm doesn’t go anywhere.

They stop at memorizing the “how-to” listicle and when trying to apply the emotional jujitsu against the resistance in their organizations, they experience limited success.

But these elements, dissatisfaction, vision, and first steps, must be greater than the sum of the organizational resistance to them. Or else, the changes that you are seeking inside of your organization, your work group, or even the team that is inside your sphere of influence, won’t happen.

The resistance to change is pernicious, persistent, and it never gives up. The resistance to change is sneaky and sly and sometimes comes in the form of well-meaning people and situations that appear as though they are helping your cause of change when in reality they are hurting it.

No great change happens without conflict. And no great conflict can happen without the resistance being overcome.

And if you think that it can, then you are bound to wind up stuck in the same place of dissatisfaction where you initially began your change journey.

There Are Easy Solutions to Complicated Problems

The two most difficult roadblocks to success in resolving hard problems are the presence of real trade-offs and considerations of power.

Most complicated problems and difficult conflicts have simple solutions. We often confuse what we believe is a hard solution with a complicated one. What makes solutions to hard problems not easy are the presence of trade-offs (scare resources in scare environments) and power.

In a world of scarce resources (the two scarcest being time and attention these days…even more than money) the trade-offs that must be made to create the space for solutions to your most pressing conflicts can seem insurmountable.

Here are a few (of many) trade-offs. Each one can either represent a zero-sum trade-off or an even exchange trade-off:

Conflict or Apathy

Attention or Ignorance

Awareness or Ennui

Momentum or Slowness

Going Along or Resisting

Reassurances or Courage

Change or Status Quo

Focused or Distracted

Power is the consideration behind most forms of fear. Either a lack of power or power focused in an area that doesn’t benefit getting to a solution. That power is often cloaked in reassurances and comes with a healthy dose of resistance.

We often confuse easy with simple in our own minds. Easy solutions to conflicts usually involve the kinds of solutions that favor whatever trade-off benefits us and validates our perspective.

Easy solutions also preserve our power (maintaining the status quo), or grow our power in each conflict situation. Hard solutions take away or diminish our power, as well as go against whatever trade-off we’d like to have honored.

What makes solutions hard to simple problems is that we are often blind to what is hard, and are aware of what is easy.

Be sure that you are making trade-offs you can live with, in a search for complicated solutions to hard problems.

Change Comes Upon Us Gradually

Change comes upon us gradually.

Change comes in our organizations when we hire one person, and then two, and then more, who think differently about the mission, vision, values, and goals of the organization.

Change comes when the people (or persons) at the top of a hierarchy choose to give up their power over and engage in power with; and, not as a marketing ploy or with lip service.

Change comes when a person in an organization, decides to take a risk, stand up, challenge the status quo respectfully, firmly, and consistently.

Change comes when technology creeps into systems that we once believed were sacrosanct, but are now revealed to be hollow.

Change comes when we are lamenting the things that have passed and are looking with fear at the future that has yet to come.

And then, change is upon us all at once.

And we collectively can’t remember a time when the change wasn’t the norm.

First 200 Bad Drawings

There are 200 bad drawings inside every comic book artist.

Just as there are an estimated 1,000 bad words/turns of phrase inside of every writer.

And there are a certain number of below quality (or poor quality) teaching or training experiences inside of every teacher and trainer.

There are 1,500 bad jump shots inside every free throw shooter. As there are multiple bad layups inside of every basketball player.

In professional fields from comedy to athletics, the audience accepts that there is a curved path that the performer has to walk, from being inexperienced to being experienced.

What the audience doesn’t know is where the performer is at on the path from being inexperienced to being experienced, which complicates the audience’s judgment of the performance.

And can warp its feedback.

But the thing is, once the performer gets all the inexperience out of their system, and successfully works their way through the curve from inexperienced to experienced, the performer won’t care what the performance “looks like” to the audience.

The performer won’t care about the feedback about their performance from the audience either.

Rejection Without Shame

Rejection comes in a litany of flavors:

“We don’t have any conflicts here.”

“We deal with conflicts really well here.”

“We don’t really need your services right now, but if we do, we’ll give you a call.”

“[silence]. Who are you again?”

“How do you say your name?”

“I don’t understand how anybody can make money from doing what you do.”

“How do you monetize that?”

“Yeah, your rates are too high.”

“Yeah, your rates are too low.”

“I don’t understand what you are selling.”

“Why can’t you help me NOW?”

“Where did you get your degree again?”

“How do you make it here in this town?”

“Where are you from again?”

“Hmmmm. Ok. That sounds kind of interesting.” [Then wander off to get bread at the networking event ‘nosh’ table.]

“Have you tried working for a human resource company?”

“Have you tried working with [insert name of big company here]?”

“I don’t understand what you just said that you do.”

“There aren’t any people around here doing that are there?”

“Could you not charge me as much?”

“We’re strapped for cash right now and not really focused on retaining outside help right now.”

“Your rates are too high; you’ll never make a profit around here.”

“We are a family company. There aren’t any conflicts among family.”

“I handle conflict really well; I don’t see how I would use your services.”

“Have you tried working with lawyers around here?”

“We can’t pay you.”

“We’ll get back to you.”

“We can’t pay you.”

“Can you do this for free for us?”

“We can’t pay you.”

“Send us your information and we’ll look at it.” >click<

“I just don’t have time to talk to you, call back next week.” [Call back again next week]

“I just don’t have time to talk to you, call back next week.” >click<

“That sounds interesting, but I don’t want you to drive all the way to [name location 25 miles in any direction from locally] to meet me. It would just be a waste of your time.”

“You’ll never make a living doing that. You should get a ‘real’ job.”

“You went to college for CONFLICT!?”

“Why don’t you just volunteer?”

Very rarely have we ever heard “No,” “No thank you,” or “No this isn’t for us.”

Although ultimately, the fact is that all the forms of rejection really come down to such a consideration. All the forms of rejection can be given without personally attacking, trolling, tearing down individuals’ talent, and questioning people’s motives. But when rejection crosses the line from “No this isn’t for us” to “You don’t deserve to have a voice,” or “You need to be denied the ability to speak because I disagree with you,” then we’ve crossed over the line into another area.

And we must be careful with what lines we cross because sometimes, there is no going back.

The Opposite of Artificial Intelligence

When was the last time you…

…asked fierce questions?

…emphasized uniqueness?

…engaged with others?

…told stories that related past victories to potential solutions to present–and future–problems?

…ruthlessly eliminated hurry?

…were direct, but not demeaning?

…established a foundation of empathy with another person?

…didn’t read from the manual, but spoke from the heart?

…focused on the connection as the product rather than trying to persuade, cajole, or move another person into buying whatever it is that you are selling?

It’s hard to connect with others because performing the actions listed above is hard.

Not “hard” like plowing a field for planting wheat is hard. Or “hard” like picking lettuce in a field for $4.00 a day is hard. Or “hard” like working on a construction site to break up concrete.

Those kinds of “hard” are increasingly being performed either by human beings (who will soon be replaced by machines and artificial programs that can perform those actions better) or by machines and artificial programs that are performing those actions better right now.

It’s always been hard to make an emotional connection with other people and to break down the carefully constructed resistance to change we have constructed in our heads—that then manifests in our tools, our systems, our organizations, and our civilizations.

For humanity to remain a relevant, vibrant, force well into the future, we had better figure out how to make space for all human beings no matter their status to do the hard work of connecting.

Otherwise, what really separates us from the machines who will replace us?

We Don’t Need More Political Solutions to Leadership Temptations

Organizational inertia is exacerbated when leaders succumb to the strong forces of temptations.

Temptations for organizational leaders include (but are not limited to) maintaining the status quo, keeping the bureaucracy in place, and making sure that the can gets kicked far enough down the road that any consequences from that act of can kicking won’t sully their future reputation.

Bureaucracy is a temptation.

Maintaining the status quo is a temptation.

Practicing avoiding looking at trendlines is a temptation.

Focusing on the wrong changes at the wrong time (or the right changes at the wrong time) is a temptation.

The struggle for people who have not been designated “organizational leaders” is that there are all kinds of changes that need to be made, processes that need to be upgraded, and solutions that need to be advocated for within organizations.

But tragically, there appear to be no leaders interested in anything other than being tempted into continuing to be the politicians they maybe always were in the first place.

People not designated “organizational leaders” have been inculcated since at least grade school into the idea that being picked, being chosen to make a change, rather than independently choosing to imagine, take a risk on, and advocate for a new paradigm, is the only way that changes can happen.

But with the current level of systemic failure in organizations everywhere around us (from governments to small businesses), and with the dearth of leadership interest or experience evidenced in leaders who were picked, we don’t need more preservation of temptation.

We don’t need more political solutions to leadership temptations.

Instead, the people not designated “organizational leaders,” who are trapped in organizations (and trapped in systems at a higher level) should choose to put on the mantle of statesman—or stateswoman if you prefer.

A statesman chooses themselves (and their allies), raises their hand, says “I will take responsibility and accountability if an initiative fails, and will give away credit generously if it succeeds,” and is not tempted away from the course by bureaucracy, maintaining the status quo, avoidance of trends, or distractions.

A statesman calls the bluff—respectfully, firmly, but clearly—of the resistance.

This bluff calling—in all its varied forms—requires persistence, courage, self-awareness, a high tolerance for risk, and, of course, a strong dose of candor along with clarity of vision and purpose.

We need more people not designated “organizational leaders,” with the courage to choose themselves to be the statesman in their own sphere of influence.

We need fewer people designated as leaders (who behave like politicians) succumbing to temptations in our organizations and systems.

And we need them today.