Eating change for breakfast

In a recent interview, the author Sylvia Nasar said, “From the beginning of civilization to the 19th century, 90 percent of humanity was stuck in place, even if their country did comparatively well. Average people lived like livestock — they didn’t go anywhere, read anything or wear much; they ate bad food and didn’t live a very long time.”

I wouldn’t trade centuries with those people, but at least they took some comfort in the familiar. Today, we live in a near-constant state of disturbance. We’re anything but stuck in place, and it poses an unprecedented challenge for leaders. Leadership has become a more dangerous calling. The principles haven't changed, but the conditions have.

The tenor of the times is different. The atmospheric pressure of competition continues to rise, and not just in business. It’s the same in education, government, healthcare and the nonprofit sectors. It used to be that you could spend a good deal of your career traveling across plains and prairie where the landscape was relatively flat and wide open. Now we’ve all come to a mountainous, craggy expanse.

All of this means that change will choose you even if you don’t choose it. Leading change — safely navigating yourself and others through periods of transition —has become a gateway competency in the global age. It requires two things: the performance of work and the absorption of stress. If you can’t lead change, you simply can’t lead. And it’s not just incremental change that we’re talking about. Even the hale and hearty must shake hands with radical change here and there. There are no storm-proof companies and there are no sources of competitive advantage that last forever. It’s all ice. The only question is the rate of the melt.

I notice that when this new reality finally registers with someone, that person gradually takes on a new mindset — a planned abandonment mentality, if you will. A mentality that assumes and anticipates the continuous loss of competitive advantage. A deep psychological acceptance of the turbulence, speed and complexity of the global age.

Until then we can find ourselves engaged in a personal battle of denial against the new normal, its pace and its dynamism. A leader with a planned abandonment mentality has come to terms with the new reality and has become reconciled to it. The emotional barriers have been permanently disabled.

Do you demonstrate a planned abandonment mentality? Have you made peace with reality? Do you realize there will be times when you need to take bold action to change the way you do things?