I have been reflecting on the following quote by Marshall Goldsmith in his insightful book, Triggers: Creating Behavior That Lasts - Becoming the Person You Want to Be, (Crown Business, 2015):
“A changing environment changes us…. If we do not create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us. And the result turns us into someone we do not recognize.”
Since March and the arrival of COVID-19, we have been living in a constantly changing environment. We know that we can not control the virus and to a degree we can not even influence the behavior or choices of others around us. Some days we aren’t even certain we are making the right choices or decisions. Routinely, the upshot of all this change in the environment around us and, to a large degree, inside of us is that we wonder if we are turning into someone we don’t recognize anymore.
I believe that for a large part of this year we have been experiencing an on-going and deeply challenging level of cognitive dissonance. Marshall Goldsmith in his book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful (Hyperion, 2007), defines cognitive dissonance as “the disconnect between what we believe in our minds and what we experience or see in reality.” In particular, I think this situation is common and difficult in the world of management and leadership right now. As a result, many managers and leaders are loosing their confidence about what to do and how to proceed given the endless number of unforeseen variables and known variables. The upshot of this situation is analysis paralysis or even worse the deployment of work avoidance behaviors, i.e. the choice to just not make a decision in the hopes that all of it will just go away over time.
In the same aforementioned book by Goldsmith, he reminds us that “the more we are committed to believing that something is true, the less likely we are to believe that the opposite is true, even in the face of clear evidence that shows we are wrong.” I see this happening left, right and center, using a very old set of terms. Clear empirical and scientific evidence about what is the current state of affairs is not changing peoples’ behaviors or organizations’ choices.
Furthermore, many leaders are sharing with me the old phrase uttered by Admiral Farragut in 1864 at the Battle of Mobile Day during the American Civil War,: “damn the torpedos; full speed ahead!” While Farragut did win the battle, it also came with a high price. As a former history teacher, I get the reference, but have to point out that fighting a virus and fighting a civil war are not the same thing. One has concrete fortifications and known defenses while the other is constantly evolving. While humans were able to rapidly decode the genome of COVID-19, the cure is still elusive.
Still, I am not hopeless but I am very much challenged. Returning to Goldsmith’s work in the book, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful, he writes: “people will do something - including changing their behaviors - only if it can be demonstrated that doing so is in their own best interests as defined by their own values.” This is a powerful insight and it deserves a great deal of reflection.
Over the course of this past spring and summer, I have observed people and companies change their behavior, and their strategic and operational choices. When listening carefully about how this happened successfully, I have figured out that the key to making this happen resides in the phrase, “as defined by their own values.”
While I have talked about the importance of organizational culture and core values or principals as being the strategy and competitive advantage of successful companies for decades, I have relearned over the last six months that when the company’s core values are in alignment with employees’ own personal core values, then behavioral change happens successfully at the personal and organizational levels.
Now, for some, I could be stating the obvious, but the underlying insight given the magnitude of cognitive dissonance that is taking place right now at home and at work is that when we recruit and retain employees who are already pre-wired with the company’s core values, we generate the ability for the company as a whole to be successful.
As I have noted at many From Vision to Action Leadership Trainings and Executive Roundtables, I have come to firmly believe that organizational change is the sum of individual change. And when individuals know that their work matters, that they are respected and supported personally and professionally, and that when they believe they are making progress at work which they consider to be meaningful and important, plus “their own values” are in alignment the mission and core values of the company, then they can handle an ever changing and non-controllable environment better than those who are not experiencing these fundamentals.
Thus, my challenge to you this week is the following:
- rediscover your own personal core values.
- unpack and get to know better the core values or principles of your company.
- find alignment between the two.
- remember that cognitive dissonance is normal and that there are days when we all get overwhelmed.
- sit down with your team and let them know you continue to support them as we all move through this constantly changing environment.
We will make it through this time. We just need to do it together.
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