The Fragmentary Present

During a recent phone consultation, she told me she was feeling overwhelmed by too much change. Some of it was happening at the management team level and other parts were happening at the front line staff level. From her perspective, everyone was wanting to change everything. The outcome was that everywhere there were messes to clean up and she just felt lost in it all.

As I listened, I was reminded of the following quote by sociologist John Berger in Margaret Wheatley’s book,  Turning To One Another: simple conversations to restore hope to the future (Berret-Koehler, 2001): “There is no continuity between actions, there are no pauses, no paths, no pattern, no past and no future. There is only the clamor of the… fragmentary present. Everywhere there are surprises and sensations, yet nowhere is there any outcome. Nothing flows through; everything interrupts.”

More and more people are having this experience and struggling deeply with it. They do not know where to begin, where to focus or where to invest their limited time and energy.

My answer to her that day may sound simple but it is not easy. In situations of this nature, we need to lead with strategic thinking, not just reactive, operational problem solving. According to Aaron Olson and and B. Keith Simerson in their book, Leading With Strategic Thinking: Four Ways Effective Leaders Gain Insight, Drive Change, and Get Results (Wiley, 2015), strategic thinking comprises three activities: assessing situations, recognizing patterns, and making decisions.

From my vantage point, we talk a lot about decision-making in the world of leadership. We also talk some about recognizing patterns. Clearly, we do a lot of assessing of situations, i.e. technical, adaptive or crisis. And yet, we continue to struggle.

I think the solution comes down to being able to switch back and forth between two different mindsets, namely reflexive, cause-oriented thinking and proactive, response-oriented thinking. In the former, we seek to understand whether or not the problems could have been prevented. We also want to know if the impact is only internal to the organization or was it being driven by external factors. 

On the other hand, response-oriented thinking focuses on what can we improve given what is happening. We look for the positive impact and how to contain the negative impact. 

For those of you who are intrigued by this line of thought, I encourage you to read the following article: Margolis, Joshua D., and Paul G. Stoltz, “How to Bounce Back From Adversity”, Harvard Business Review, January-February 2010.

The fragmentary present is not going away. Interruptions will happen. Lack of continuity is becoming normal. Our first choice is to be clear about which mindset we will utilize to deal with what is happening around us.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Endings and New Beginnings

As we prepare for the next two years and the continued recovery from a global pandemic, we as leaders must not embrace growth and profitability strategies that frame up our organizations as machines. Over and over during strategic planning consultations, I am hearing people use machine based language such as “we just need to swap out the old parts for new and improved ones” or “we need to install new people like we do new software.” This kind of language and the resulting scaling up can often create a monoculture that relies on replication, standardization, and compliance. It does not support scaling across, i.e. networks of relationships across the organization through which ideas and beliefs could travel, adapt, evolve, and grow. 

On the other hand, as I pointed out last week, scaling across invites teams to learn from one another and to solve their own problems in their own particular way. As Margaret Wheatley reminds us, “People don’t support things that are forced on them. We don’t act responsibly on behalf of plans and programs created without us. We resist being changed, not change itself.”

In order to be successful between 2022 - 2024, we must differentiate between change management and transition management. To review, change management is situational and outcome focused. Transition management is the internal, psychological and emotional process of dealing with endings. As the late William Bridges noted, “The starting point for a transition is not the outcome but the ending that you will have to make to leave the old situation behind.” Thus, a transition starts with an ending and finishes with a new beginning. This ending begins with the letting go of the old ways of working and dealing with the resulting losses.

For us here today, we need to recognize that “new beginnings involve new understandings, new values, new attitudes and - most of all - new identities”, again referencing the work of William Bridges. As he notes, in a new beginning, people want it to happen and are relieved. And at the exact same moment, they fear it because they will be required to make a commitment to a new way of thinking and doing things.

Therefore, people resist new beginnings because they reactivate old anxieties that were triggered by “the ending”, e.g. the ending of work as we knew it back in March 2020. This may also include the risk that the “new beginning” may end again, i.e. we go back to hybrid or all remote work due to another wave of COVID-19 based on a new variant.

This week, be mindful of endings and new beginning. Be consistent in your messaging and your actions. Remember people are trying out new behaviors and new perspectives. Therefore, create planned quick successes or short term wins, and celebrate these moments of achievement.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Finding Meaning In The Midst of Loss

So many people have passed away during this global pandemic. So much has been lost. It has impacted each of us in many different ways. And it will continue to impact us for generations to come.

What we as leaders need to understand this fall is that we are experiencing grief and mourning at the same time. Grief is about what we think and feel on the inside when some one we know or love dies. On the other hand, mourning is the outward expression of our internal grief. It is a process of adapting to the changes created by this loss. It involves deep reflection and introspection at the individual and collective levels. And this becomes a catalyst for personal development and growth.

Yet, when I think about the grief and losses so many have experienced, both personally, professionally, and organizationally, I do not see leaders creating time or space for the collective mourning of our losses. I also do not see us creating a celebration of life for those who have made it this far.

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler defined The Grieving Cycle as having the following stages:

The first stage is denial which begins with the shock, pain and guilt related to the passing of a loved one. This helps us survive the loss. It recognizes that on one level the world has become meaningless and overwhelming.

The second stage is anger. This is an indication of the intensity of our loss and our love.

The third stage is bargaining. Here, we engage in a temporary truce with what is happening. It is a way not to deal with the pain of the loss.

The fourth stage is depression. Here, our attention moves into the present rather than the loss of the past. This is a normal and appropriate response

The fifth stage is acceptance. As we accept the reality of what has happened, we learn to live with the loss. We also begin making new connections and new relationships.

David Kessler recently wrote there is a sixth stage to The Grieving Cycle, namely finding meaning.

When I visit with leaders who want to get to this stage, most of them are focused on doing an organizational review of the global pandemic response and the experiences that took place within it. Here, they want to determine the impact that the global pandemic has had on the organization, departments, teams and the people. In essence, they are engaged a in massive After Action Report.

So far, two interesting things have surfaced during these in-depth reviews. First, successfully scaling across the organization was the precursor to scaling up pandemic solutions. Within the adaptive response to the global pandemic, those who fostered networks of relationships across the organization had the capacity to get ideas and beliefs to travel, adapt, evolve, and grow faster than others. Second, those who were successful did not reduce those relationships to transactional interactions. Those who were successful also focused on maintaining the relationships while getting the tasks done.

If we seek to find meaning in the midst of loss, we must create time and space for people to grieve, mourn and reflect. It is the sum of these three things that will give us the ability to learn, grow and be resilient during the coming months and years.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

The Greatest Threat

“The greatest threat to our planet,” writes Robert Swan, a polar explorer, “is the belief that someone else will save it.” 

The minute I read this powerful statement I realized that the greatest threat to an organization is the assumption that someone else will change it and make it better. The common assumption is that someone else can “save” the company.

However, we must not succumb to this mindset. We need to be the ones who step up and make positive and effective changes within our circle of influence irregardless of whether or not we are the positional leader. We can create healthier teams, better local customer service, and stronger interpersonal relationships. We may not be the leader as defined by a positional title but we can be a leader. 

I agree with Margaret Wheatley when she wrote: “A leader is anyone willing to help, anyone who sees something that needs to change and takes the first steps to influence that situation.”

Every day, we can choose to be a person who is helpful. We can take the first steps to influence a situation. 

Every day, we can notice a problem, own a problem, and solve a problem. The greatest threat is the belief that someone else will do it.

Every day, this moment of choice is happening all around us. People are stepping up and helping out. We need to notice their effort and support them.

The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it. 

The greatest threat to our companies is the belief that making it better is someone else’s job.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257

Focus on Psychological Safety and Accountability

During the first 6 - 9 months of the global pandemic, we focused on execution-as-learning rather than execution-as-efficiency. There was so much that was new and unknown. We just took it day by day, problem by problem.

Now that things are sightly more stable, many leaders want to rush back to an execution-as-efficiency form of work during this recovery period. This is a dangerous choice. 

First, during the execution-as-learning phase, we used the best knowledge available to create new systems and processes. We knew the information we were using would be constantly changing. We also knew that it was going to be hard to measure employee productivity or individual performance given how much change was moving through the organization.

So, in order to create psychological safety for continued execution-as-learning, we made sure no one was penalized for asking for help or admitting a mistake. We were in a whole new world.

Yet, supporting psychological safety can make holding people accountable more difficult. The key to doing both is to have clear performance expectations while acknowledging that uncertainty will require continued debate and dialogue. When we do both of these things, we make it possible to give tough feedback, have difficult conversations, and confront the brutal facts with respect and trust.

What senior leaders need to remember is that this level of work often falls on the shoulders of middle managers. They are the ones who have to learn faster given the operational challenges that surface every day. They are the ones who have to figure out what is and what is not working.

One way to support middle managers is to hold safe, face-to-face meetings. During these gatherings, we have to share lessons learned, unlearned and relearned. This creates disciplined reflection and sharing.

Now, I understand that these meetings will takes time and people away from production. But it is not lost productivity. It is the building of capacity to meet the complex and changing needs of the current and future markets and the customers. When we create space for learning, we make learning happen faster and scaling up the lessons learned better.

For more information on execution-as-learning vs execution-as-efficiency, I suggest you read the following article: “The Competitive Imperative of Learning” by Amy C. Edmondson in the July-August 2008 issue of the Harvard Business Review.

Geery Howe, M.A. Consultant, Executive Coach, Trainer in Leadership, Strategic Planning and Organizational Change Morning Star Associates 319 - 643 - 2257