Tag Archive for: transformation

Stop Standing in Your Past and Start Standing in Your Future

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In 1943, Thomas Watson, Chairman of IBM, declared there was a world market for about five computers. In 1895, Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, announced that heavier-than-air flying machines were impossible. In 1899, the Director of the U.S. Patent Office suggested everything that could be invented already had been.

These weren’t fringe thinkers. These were the smartest, most experienced and informed minds of their generation, and they got it wrong in ways that look almost comic from where we stand now. Which raises one uncomfortable question: what are you just as certain about today that will look equally absurd in a few years?

Let’s be honest, we all walk around with important convictions that feel like facts but are actually just the residue of our past, hardened into beliefs that quietly kill our future before it ever gets a chance to arrive. “We don’t believe what we see, we see what we already believe.” Our thoughts are not pure objective observations of reality. They are projections from the rearview mirror, running on a loop, dressed up as truth and wisdom.

Think about the last time your team started a new bold initiative. I’d bet real money someone said “this is going to be hard” or “it’ll never work here” within the first hour. Those aren’t facts, not even informed predictions. They’re past experiences dressed up in future language, and if you let them go unchallenged, they become exactly what everyone said they would. That’s what I call driving-while-staring-into-the-rearview-mirror. Everything you think you see ahead of you is actually behind you. You’re moving toward a future you can’t see because you’re too busy obsessing over where you’ve already been.

I was brought in to work with a highly siloed global go-to-market team at a major cybersecurity company. Sales was furious at Marketing for not generating enough quality leads. Marketing resented Sales for complaining constantly while not dedicating the time and focus to provide the input Marketing needed to actually help them. Every meeting devolved into the same argument, people talking past each other, blaming, listening only long enough to reload their next objection.

When I started talking to individuals from both groups, the detail that stopped me wasn’t the conflict itself. It was the timeline. This had been going on for years. Different people had different explanations for how it started, but everyone shared one belief with absolute certainty: nothing would ever change. Conflict had become their identity; dysfunction had become their culture. Nobody was standing in an empowering future because they’d stopped believing one was available to them. They were building a story about why the situation could never improve, and they had been building it so long they’d mistaken it for reality.

Now contrast that with a group of managers from two misaligned functions at a well-known technology company that asked me to help them generate clarity and alignment about their roles and responsibilities. We did the hard work together: honest conversations, real ownership, people taking responsibility for their part in what had broken down without hiding behind blame or waiting for the other side to go first. In one session, a senior manager looked across the table at his counterpart and said, “I’ve been protecting my turf for so long I forgot we were supposed to be on the same side.” The room went quiet in the way rooms only go quiet when someone has said the truth out loud. Then people started talking differently. Instead of “yes, but,..” they were saying “yes, and…” Ideas built on ideas. Energy that had been locked up in years of friction suddenly had somewhere to go.

They put their past down. Not by forgetting it, not by pretending it hadn’t happened or cost them real time and progress, but by consciously choosing to stop carrying it into every conversation going forward. They built a set of shared future goals to replace their previous default predicament. The operating model that followed was rooted entirely in where they were going, not where they had been. And the difference in that room was immediate, unmistakable, and lasting.

I want to push back hard on the advice I hear so many people give about the past, because most of it is useless. “Forget the past, discard it, pretend it didn’t happen.” That’s not just impossible, particularly when the past includes real trauma, failure, loss, and disappointment. It’s also completely unnecessary. You don’t have to erase something to stop letting it run your life. The past deserves to be honored and learned from. What it does not deserve is a permanent seat at the table where you’re trying to build something new.

Most people get this exactly backwards. They remain fixated in the past and leave their future alone, protecting the familiar weight of what went wrong like it’s something precious, treating bold possibility like it’s naive. Leaders do it, teams do it, entire organizations do it for years and call it realism.

If you’re leading a team operating from the past, don’t manage around it. Don’t let it sit quietly poisoning everything downstream. Bring people together, ask them to share what they see, how they feel, what they want and what they believe. Then make sure everyone listens to each other without defense, without correction, without explanation. Just listen. When people feel genuinely heard, the grip of the past loosens, space opens up and, in that space, for the first time, a real future becomes possible.

That’s not optimism. That’s the only way breakthroughs actually happen.

What are you resigned about?

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Have you become apathetic about something you care about? This may seem like a strange question. After all, it assumes that you are resigned about something that is important to you.

However, I believe most of us are resigned about something that is important to us a good chunk of the time. If we have strong self-awareness, commitment and discipline we may be able to pull ourselves out of apathy every time we fall into it. But, I think resignation is unavoidable for human beings. I am not suggesting that all of us are apathetic all the time. But, it is the nature of people to dream and aspire, but when things don’t go as planned, we often become resigned and apathetic.

This happens all too often. We see a possibility for ourselves in an area that is important to us, perhaps it’s about being more successful, making more money, being healthier, having a relationship or simply being happier. We believe it can really come true for us. We open our heart to it, and this makes us very excited and hopeful. We feel that “everything is possible,” and “we can have it all.” Call it falling in love, with our life.

We then step out into the world and things don’t quite pan out the way we anticipated; it’s harder to stay with the program or drive progress or results than we expected, others aren’t as receptive, collaborative or supportive as we hoped, and results don’t happen as fast and big as we planned.

At first, we get a little discouraged but when reality continues to be challenging, a nagging doubt begins to emerge. After a while, we start second guessing our dreams or our abilities. Finally, deeper discouragement descends that often leads to resignation, apathy and giving up.

Our internal conversations change throughout this progression too. As stated above, at first we feel like “everything is possible” and “life is grand.” Then, we slide into personal invalidation: “What was I thinking?” and “I wasn’t cut out for this level of success or happiness.” Then, we avalanche into undermining overgeneralizations like: “life isn’t a fairytale,” and “I need to lower my expectations.”

Resignation manifests in different forms and at different levels. Sometimes we are clear that we are resigned. We feel generally apathetic and upset, discouraged or depressed about what we feel we can’t do, achieve or obtain. Sometimes, the fact that it’s hard to get out of bed is a clear indication that we are resigned.

But, often apathy doesn’t feels to us like apathy. We go about our normal life lacking motivation, energy and inspiration, but it seems like what we are experiencing is normal, just the way life is.

We often don’t realize that the negative feelings and thinking are rooted in apathy and resignation about something that is important to us.

Have you noticed that when people are resigned about the possibility of achieving or getting what they want, they tend rationalize things, justify themselves and generally have more of a cynical or even sarcastic attitude about their struggles?

For example, people who are overweight often tend to downplay the importance of healthy eating and exercising. People who are not in a relationship tend to have negative perspectives on the importance of relationships or marriage. And people who can’t get promoted tend to blame others or the corporate environment.

The logic of this reaction is clear – it is too painful to take 100% ownership of our current situation. Most of us can’t stay in bed and give up altogether, so we resort to adopting a victim mentality, becoming cynical or numb and apathetic about our unfulfilled aspirations. We find ways to avoid feeling the pain every day.

The good news is that resignation and apathy are actually very normal and natural for people. You are not alone and resignation is not insurmountable. The key is how to catch it quickly and transform it.

To transform your apathy, you need to first own your reality. You have to be honest about the fact that you are in fact resigned about an area of your life. When you are honest and own your predicament, you become more authentic and stop pretending like you have your act together and everything is going well. By being more authentic, you can start exploring new ways to achieve what you really want.

After all, we all know that there is always more than one way to get things done. In fact, many times the new ways we derive after we get unstuck turn out to be even more effective and inspiring than our original plans.

Owning your resignation and apathy also allows you to return to your original sense of possibility and commitment. Once you are back on the saddle, you probably don’t need any help!

Ownership: The Key to Transforming Your Team or Organization

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Transforming the culture of an organization or team is not easy. It is a long-term process. It doesn’t happen overnight. And, typically, it is not a smooth ride. There are ups and downs, moments of excitement, feelings of progress and success, as well as moments of frustration that things are not moving fast enough or not at all.

There are three typical phases in any transformational process: (1) creation and launch, (2) concentrated effort and execution, and (3) momentum and breakthrough.

The first phase of creation and launch is the easiest phase of the process and typically very energizing. In this phase, people envision and commit to a compelling future state for their organization and/or team, and everyone is excited and hopeful about achieving a great vision.

The second phase of concentrated effort and execution is the hardest and most challenging phase of any transformation journey. In this phase, people have to work hard to start achieving the objectives they took on in the creation and launch phase, while at the same time continue to run their day-to-day business. So, in this phase, people have to manage two jobs – creating the new future AND maintaining the existing. Juggling these two worlds requires foresight, vision and stance.

It actually becomes even more challenging – in the second phase people have to put their heads down and execute on what they took on in phase one, and it usually takes time before they can see the fruits of their labor. I often refer to it as putting in 10 units of effort in order to get 1 unit of progress/results. So, you can appreciate why people need to keep believing and operating with their future state in mind.

Think of it through the “caterpillar-to-butterfly” analogy. In phase one, the caterpillar gets excited about the prospect of being a butterfly who is free to roam with no restrictions. Then, in the second phase, the caterpillar finds himself inside the cocoon and suddenly life doesn’t look as exciting as it did in phase one. In fact, any normal caterpillar can become discouraged quite quickly about the whole butterfly idea. Suddenly, becoming a butterfly seems much less achievable and attractive than before.

This is exactly the emotional roller coaster organizations and teams go through in their transformation process – especially in the second phase.

Here is an example: I was working with a large service company on their transformation. They wanted to take their culture, performance and results to a new level. In phase one, they created a very powerful and exciting future vision and strategy that everyone felt genuinely excited about. Their strategy included initiatives that were designed to change the game in key areas that were important to them.

Then it was time to execute on these new initiatives and it wasn’t easy at all. Every time I would come to the organization for coaching sessions people would stop me in the hallways to brief me on how things were going.

I was getting two different types of reports from different people – some would pull me into their office to tell me how well things were going. Others stopped me to complain and tell me how badly things were going.

Many of the people who were complaining to me about the process seemed to be telling me that “my program wasn’t working.”

This mindset of reduced ownership for the change is very typical in phase two. The problem with thinking that the program is my program is that this is neither true nor empowering. This point of view reflects lack of ownership.

When I help an organization go to the next level, I facilitate programs to bring about change. However, I always make a point to remind people that they are not participating in my program. Rather, I am supporting them in their program. That paradigm of ownership is much more effective and empowering.

In fact, my ability to help the organization in its transformation is in direct correlation to the level of ownership the organization has toward their transformation process. So, I am constantly pushing on that aspect. The power and magic of transformation is in the ownership.

The big question of ownership for any team is: What future are you going to prove right?

It may seem an odd question at first. But, if you think about it – everyone is always proving something right, by default or by design. Either that their transformation will work and therefore is working OR that it won’t work, and therefore it isn’t working. That’s what the phrase – the game is over before it began – means.

When a team owns their process and they are out to prove that it works, they will go out of their way to figure it out. They won’t waste time complaining because that just doesn’t change anything. Think of it as “making lemonades from lemons” rather than complaining that “the lemons are so sour.”

Phase two takes time and a lot of perseverance. It’s not about perfection but about progress – continuing to drive progress and own the journey.

The third phase of momentum and breakthrough is the most rewarding phase of the transformation journey. But it only happens when the team stays the course in phase two. Unfortunately, so many teams fail in their transformational process because they simply don’t stay the course in phase two. They lack ownership, foresight and perseverance.

But, when they do, things start picking up and taking off, and in a hockey stick trend the team starts achieving momentum, results and breakthroughs beyond their expectation and imagination.

Photo by: Laura Bittner

It’s Easier Than Ever to Make a Difference

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Apathy, resignation and cynicism are the enemy of everything that is good and the friend of everything that is bad. When employees and managers come to believe that they can’t make a difference, the organization is doomed to mediocrity at best, and to failure at worst. Unfortunately, I see this take place on a regular basis. However, in my years of experience with client organizations – going back long before the rise of social media – I have also seen many examples of how a single person who is courageous and determined to effect change can start a movement.

Here’s one example: Many years ago, I worked with a woman who was a secretary in the finance division of a large, multi-national corporation. This woman’s rank in the organization was lowly, and she could easily have gone unnoticed. The company had been through a difficult series of downsizing measures. Morale was at an all-time low, customer satisfaction was suffering badly, and there were many issues inhibiting productivity. That year, the division was ordered to reduce its work force by 40 percent as part of an across-the-board cost-cutting measure. This was a devastating blow to the team.

The secretary volunteered to chair a team focused on taking care of the people being let go. She was determined to help everyone (who wanted assistance) find alternative jobs either inside the division or externally, thereby minimizing the morale issues. She enrolled a team of like-minded people and they all worked diligently, with great passion and courage, to pursue her mission. She and her team succeeded in securing jobs for a large percentage of the employees. That year, employee satisfaction rose significantly, and so did customer satisfaction. Most people attributed the remarkable outcome to this one woman’s leadership.

Although she had previously been perceived as a “nobody,” the woman became a widely recognized, admired, and respected leader. Her courage and commitment brought her influence, credibility, and status. She was later promoted, and when certain projects had to get done she was frequently invited to senior leadership team meetings because senior executives recognized her immense value and contribution to the organization’s advancement.

Twenty years ago, this kind of transformation required slow and painstaking efforts. Now, technology is transforming our ability to propagate change, and recent global events are the best illustration of this. We are all witnessing how social media and technologies that allow people to communicate easily over long distances are making profound changes in our society.

It may take less time, but it does not take any less courage to organize a movement through Facebook than it took to stand up and be counted in an organization where transformation required reaching one person at a time and convincing people one by one. That said, it is simpler today to make a difference in organizations because it is so much faster and easier to generate and facilitate a broad-based dialogue. But courageous leadership was taking transformation viral long before we had the technology to speed it up. If you ever feel that you cannot make a difference, remember this constant truth: The human spirit, courage, commitment, and determination are still the factors that drive all change.