Ecstasis Blog

Today, President Obama signed into law a bill that reforms America’s health care system. Regardless of which side of the political spectrum you may occupy, this is significant change. We’ll leave the political debate to another time and place. I’d like to talk about change and our relationship to it.

Most of us would say that change is good. And, still most of us don’t like to change. We change constantly when we are younger without even thinking about it. We change physically, cognitively, emotionally, and psychologically as we age and learn. As we get older, we become settled and more and more resistant to change. We like things the way they are. We become comfortable. We know where everything is. This is a precarious mindset to maintain in today’s world. It is a dangerous mindset for leaders.

Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers said recently, “Change is great when it happens to somebody else. When it happens to us, it makes us uncomfortable. And yet, countries, companies or individuals who do not change will be left behind.” Truer words were never spoken. So what is Chambers saying? I believe he is calling us to be uncomfortable. If we want to be leaders in this new economy we need to look for ways to lead change and not react to it. We need to recapture the openness and curiosity of youth and be willing to be uncomfortable.

I hear many people I work with talk about wanting to find balance. Balance is easy when we are standing still. It is much more difficult when we are moving. In life and business today, we are almost never standing still; and if we are, that means someone is passing us by. I counter that we should not seek balance; we should seek to get better at the act of balancing while we keep moving forward. We don’t have the luxury of standing still.

I’m not advocating change for change’s sake. I am saying that we must always examine the status quo with open eyes and a willingness to push ourselves and others out of our comfort zones to produce positive change. The mindset that serves us best when it comes to change is the mindset of openness and curiosity. This is the mindset of ongoing learning. If we aren’t learning, we aren’t leading.

Leadership is not about having all the answers all the time. Leadership is about gathering the right people and harnessing the right resources to create positive change. When leaders do this, they are in no danger of being “left behind.” On the contrary, they are out in front, embracing change, managing the correlative anxiety of uncertainty, and dealing with their own discomfort in order to help others with theirs. There is an amount of discomfort associated with any change. If we are to lead, we must become comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Face Change with Poise
The pace of change continues to accelerate. The world works at a faster and faster speed with each passing day. One thing may be certain as we make our way through this dynamic economic reset, things are never going to go back to the way they were.
We believe that people don’t fear change; they fear loss. In times of dramatic change, people fear they are no longer in control of their situation. They may also fear that they don’t know where things are headed or why things may be happening as they are. Some may feel that they lack the talent to compete and survive in the emerging business environment. Still others may fear that they will lose their connections with their team or organization.
Leading through change requires a different skill set than leading in times of stability. The skills required for leading in a stable environment have more to do with managing a process. We need to be good at analyzing, planning, directing activity, and monitoring situations. Those skills are still important; however we also need to grow a skill set that enables us to lead in a constantly changing environment. These skills have more to do with uncertainty and engaging people to allay fear. In a changing environment we want to be good at providing clarity, experimentation, communication, and developing others.
The goal is an engaged and high performing workforce in a constantly changing business environment. The way to get there is leadership that can remain calm in the face of change and employ a new skill set for change with aplomb. At the heart of this new skill set, will be the leader’s capacity to lead with poise.
In the Mirriam-Webster Dictionary (2005), poise is defined as “a stably balanced state, an easy self-possessed assurance of manner, gracious tact in coping or handling, a particular way of carrying oneself.” Poise is not something the leader does; it is who the leader is. Poise happens from the inside out.
Leaders seeking to lead with poise will want to create the threshold occasion for themselves and their teams, facilitating the ‘ecstasis’ necessary to change and compete in the new world in which we live and do business. Organizations will want leadership at all levels capable of managing complexity: thinking clearly, making smart decisions, motivating themselves and others, and remaining calm in a fast-paced and hectic reality that is the new norm for most of us.
To read more about facing change with poise, download our white paper at http://ecstasis.com/blog/?page_id=3.

A well-crafted vision and strategy without a game plan and capacity for smart and fast execution are useless. This is the gap that keeps many organizations from realizing their vision. One leader told me, “We’re great at meetings; but nothing gets done.” This is true for lots of companies, especially companies in the midst of change. They spend an inordinate amount of time talking about the strategy and meanwhile, no one is executing to deliver it. Ecstasis Partner Debra Bowles (bowles@ecstasis.com) is former CEO of Blue Shield Life Insurance, where she oversaw many change management initiatives. She’s our resident change management guru. She says that in times of change and transition the people in our organizations need three things: Empathy from their leaders, Information about what’s going on and why, and Ideas and guidance on what their role is. This last piece comes in the form of a clear and comprehensive execution game plan that lays out what needs to be done to execute the strategy, by when and by whom. The game plan includes detailed actions to address customers, the product/service portfolio, org structure, systems and processes (including communications, working arrangements, etc), and people.
An execution game plan addresses the gap between the desired future state (your vision and strategy) and your current state by laying out the steps through the necessary transition state. It also provides the clarity and alignment that is the foundation for operational excellence. So double check and don’t forget to “mind the gap!”