Change is hard.

Let’s face it - we all have a comfort zone and moving out of it can be difficult to say the least. The change process is hard because it forces us to create and/or adjust to something that is different from our current – in effect, we have to transform. But it is something that we have to do in order to continue growing and to remain successful.

Breaking out of our comfort zone typically requires thinking about a problem or opportunity in different ways. We are forced to confront reality (what actually is) and how we perceive it (what we might want to be true). And we have to merge those sometimes very different viewpoints into an unbiased position. For example, if we want to get into the habit of exercising every day, for instance, we need to embrace reality (30 minute commitment, moderate sweat, first thing in the morning) vs. what we might perceive we could do (I’ll swim for two hours right after work, just like I did in high school).

In the business world, the reality might be a need for material changes to remedy slumping sales while our perception is holding us back: We’ll just do what we’ve always done, focus on trying to close a couple of big accounts. We aren’t going to do much different because we believe those two big sales are going to happen - just like we think we’re going to the pool tomorrow after a 10 hour day and swim for 2 hours.

Change management – or change leadership, as I prefer - is kind of like re-orienting our environments to run for 30 minutes first thing in the morning and to occasionally make it to the pool for a two-hour swim.

So how do we get there?

We know that our environment is constantly changing around us. We need an approach to change that will work for us and the teams that we lead. It has to be realistic, appropriate and not based on wishful thinking. In Bad Leadership: What it is, How it Happens and Why it Matters, Barbara Kellerman offers the seven pillars of awful leadership: Incompetence, Rigidity, Intemperance, Callousness, Corruption, Insularity and Evil. Change leadership can’t do a whole lot about evil, corruption, callousness, and intemperance. But it can help companies focus on developing competence, flexibility and a team orientation.

Things will not stay the same. We can change because of a context imposed on us or we can do it on our own. Personally, I would rather lead than follow.

This is the part in the blog where I need to circle back to my lead. So the change management approach to getting in our 30 minutes of exercise would look something like this: Think through what is keeping you from getting those 30 minutes in before work starts. Do you need to have your clothes laid out the night before and your coffee maker loaded? (competence). Do you have an exercise plan for a bad-weather day (flexibility)? Do you need to find a friend to run with? (teamwork). What is the upshot of not doing this? Trying to explain to your doctor after you develop some age-related chronic condition that you meant to exercise, but you didn’t quite get around to it. Remember that part about context being imposed, or choosing to lead?

In my next blog post, we’ll talk more about applying change leadership to rid your organization of incompetence – or the business environment equivalent of how not to get yourself locked out of the house after your run.

Read all four articles in this series:

1. The impetus for change leadership
2. Why soft knowledge matters just as much as the hard stuff
3. Rigidity to flexibility
4. Check the insularity at the door & learn to lead with an outward facing agenda