May 27, 2024
Dear leader,
Well, the time has come to turn some of these #rawedge stream of consciousness writings into a #honedblade. Well, at least sharp enough to put out there for the general public.
I'm going to invite you specifically, please, please give me your thoughts. Let me know where something resonated like a drumbeat in your soul. Let me know where my writing was clear and bold. And let me know where you get lost or where you think I'm lost in the writing. Point out the specific place and tell me what your experience was. That is the most useful feedback to me. And if you choose to do this, my eternal thanks.
Starting in mid-June, every two weeks, I'm going to release a LinkedIn newsletter. And it will be some of this writing turned into a #honedblade.
The first one is simply introducing this idea about #future-fit leaders.
Thanks for being along on the ride with me.
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#Future-fit leaders are needed right now.
Let me start by saying that being a #future-fit leader is a bit of a misnomer because it sounds like we have ample time to prepare for the future when, in truth, we need future-fit leaders right now. In my view, we’re already a bit late, a bit unprepared, a bit unequal to the task at hand which is learning how to thrive, or at least survive, in the gloriously messy and precarious (business) world we have created. No matter. You start from where you are. Especially when you’re behind.
I’ll keep using the term future-fit because I need some way to make a distinction between business-as-usual leadership and what it takes to become prepared and equal to the task at hand. There are skills to gain, abilities to practice, and re-membering to do so that we can be fit for the future, fit for complexity, fit for the challenges that are undesired, confounding, incessant and on a path of increasing intensity.
I am hearing from you, dear organizational leader, about really hard times. A $30 million business line down to $11 million, seemingly overnight. Supply chains that still aren’t reliable a couple years out from the pandemic and that pull the organization into fire drill after fire drill. Any one of these things is fine to deal with on its own, or maybe even a few at once. It’s when they come at you constantly that it gets to be a bit much. Waves and waves and waves of change. Waves and waves and waves. Most of it undesired and coming in faster and faster and faster. Faster and faster and faster.
It used to be that we could mostly keep up with the pace of change. There was even a time in the not-so-distant past that there were relatively stable periods between major changes. These were the days when we used to talk about freezing the org at the new state. Keeping it still, letting people get on with predictable work, cranking the handle on production. Everyone knew what to do. That's what a freeze was like, mostly.
This is no longer our reality, even though we still need to keep creating, producing, inventing, and cranking the handle. It’s not just that the waves of change keep coming. Many are saying that the pace of change will never be slower than it is today. I don’t know about you, but I feel like it’s already too fast. In a reality of constant and accelerating change, our old strategies of keeping up, of getting ahead, of banking on a specific outcome will fail.
So if we can't rely on our old strategies, how do we do more than just keep our heads above water? Is it possible to learn how to surf waves and waves of change as they come faster and in increasing intensity? Is it possible to go to the depths of the water beneath the turbulence of the waves to receive a truly novel idea and then emerge at the surface with wholly new possibilities?
I believe these and other ways of working with waves of change are possible. I have no idea what they will be for you, org leader, but I know that you will know. You will know what to do (at least one wise step at a time) because you will make yourself future fit.
You will do the necessary work to greet constant change, and even begin to see urgency as an ally. You will get tooled-up cognitively, emotionally, and energetically. As a result, you will have whole new categories of thoughts and perspectives, resulting in new options opening up to you. You will be free, unbound, and creative. And over time, you will become joyfully generative by working with whatever change comes.
You will take your sense of security from knowing that you have the skills to metabolize change, to get the nutrients from it. You will stop looking for your sense of security in pinning your hopes on a certain goal or keeping things stable.
You will begin to know that no matter what comes your way or how things turn out or how turbulent it all is, you are fundamentally okay. And so is your organization. You are both okay because you have built the skills to metabolize change no matter what it is.
In upcoming newsletters, I’ll write to you about what it takes to be future-fit, but I’ll give you a little teaser right now: it’s a job you do from the inside out.
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