I participated in a live Q+A recently with Agility for All’s Founder and CEO, Indra A. Books (replay here: https://youtu.be/MBQbtm_8oMw). We discussed the change process, and the difficulties that change presents someone in a role where they’re expected to provide leadership. We all face these issues regardless of the roles we fill, and the clarity I found in writing out my answers seemed worth sharing. 

There is no evil in things changing, just as there is no good in persisting in a new state. -Marcus Aurelius

What’s the most important thing about leading change?

Simple – that it starts with you. Before you can make good decisions about when and why to change you must understand what you already have – you must build that value proposition. Most people I know that occupy any management space are continually bouncing between tasks. This makes it hard to step back and assess the status quo, to understand what you have that you already value.

So start by taking some time. A good trick, once you have made space, is to cultivate the mindset that if nothing in your world could change, you would have exactly enough (of everything) already. It may sound preposterous but it’s already perfectly true for all of us, all of the time. If you had no options, no power to change, improve, acquire, or lose – you would only have 2 choices: accept that what you have is enough, or go mad! I’m just suggesting you favor sanity, and that you proactively practice it. The goal here is to build a foundation – to be able to frame the ‘why’ for driving change. If you can’t do that, you can’t lead anyone (including yourself) through it. I prefaced my answer with ‘simple’, but of course that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Creating the space and stillness needed for this, in a busy world, is challenging. And this is a change cycle in itself – the paradox of needing to change yourself and your habits in order to better understand change as a discipline. So, as with all change, you will likely fail (more than once). Accepting that is probably a good place to start from – it’ll make it easier to forgive yourself for being human and find the courage to get up and try again.

What do you see as the biggest obstacle?

Fear. Small or large, it is our fears that hold us back. Closely coupled with that is honesty, or the lack of it. We are often taught from a young age that admitting to your fears is to be avoided; that it’s a sign of weakness. Regardless of your formative years I think that message is replayed and reinforced in the world of work constantly; compete or die; weakness is to be attacked. It’s a horrible way to think and live, but you do have a choice. Choose not to be that way. Accept that you can’t control the rest of the world; you can’t control the outcomes.

The only thing you get to control is you and how you choose to think and act. Decide the best way for you to be; a way of living, working and being that gives the most back to the people you love and the world as a whole. Whatever you decide I’m confident those thoughts and actions will have intrinsic value, and if that’s the case it really shouldn’t matter how many people appreciate that value. If they do, great – you’ve added value to someone else. If they don’t, great – you’ve contributed value to the world (someone somewhere will find it – you may just never know about it). So, give up on being scared of acting, and get honest about the things you are scared of, no matter how small they may seem.

You may find yourself thinking ‘I can’t stop what I’m doing right now’ or ‘I need time to relax more than I need to change how I work’. I’m going to call ‘bullshit’ – these are excuses, and they come from fear, they come from your ego holding you back because it is quite rightly scared that if you really did change the world you might not need it anymore.

Where would you recommend people to start?

Courage. Roll your eyes if you need to, but it cannot be overlooked. Facing up to your fears, your doubts, will truly take courage. More will be needed to get past failure points. I think I’ve already covered some good starting points:

• Practice the mindset that you have and are enough

• Replace excuses for inaction with action (the obstacle becomes the way) 

In my conversation with Indra, I mentioned a great Paul Graham (Y-Combinator founder) essay about the differences in time management between ‘makers’ and ‘managers’. He makes the point that creative people work better when they have uninterrupted time blocks to work in, and those blocks typically need to be a minimum of half a day to retain motivation to get the work started. Managers on the other hand divide their days into neat 1 hour (or less) slots, and will happily work across any multiple. The tasks they consume are so different. It’s worth thinking about that in a leadership context – are you prioritizing your needs and the needs of your team in order to maximize creative time, and minimize disturbance.

It is so easy to get lost in the daily churn, and there is  danger that you start to see others as objects rather than people; to lose sight of their needs and how they differ from yours. Different almost never means less important. Practice seeing others clearly. See everyone through the same eyes as you would see the people you hold dearest in your life. Ask yourself honestly how you can help them, without regard for yourself. Rinse, and repeat.

So as you go into 2021, think about how you want to approach change. Are you mentally prepared for all that it brings? Have you taken the time to think through the options and possibilities? What is holding you back if you are resisting what you know needs to be done?

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About the Author:

KYLE RICHARDSON

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