By Armin Forstner, Managing Partner, Serrano 99 Management Consulting
Every day brings a new set of challenges and opportunities. Some of which you have foreseen and others which come right out of the left field. Consequently, change is a constant in our worlds, sometimes we require external catalysts to initiate a change, and on other occasions change arises as a result of an internal self-realisation. The same can be said for organisational and societal changes.
We as leaders like to see ourselves as Agents of change. Are we really though? Do we just accept that we are inextricably tied to a changing environment, and strive to mitigate risks while maximizing opportunities, or do we initiate and drive the change?
In other words, are we living or leading change?
These are the questions I found myself asking recently, while curating the programme for our upcoming positive & mindful leader summit on Leading Change. I was reflecting on my time as publisher in the early 2000’s, a time when the publishing industry changed from a pure print/subscription-based business model to digital and events-based business models. I still remember finding myself at industry conferences trying to find the right strategy for our finance publications in Germany. Always with the feeling: we are behind! So, in other words, we were living the change at that point, trying to keep up with what is happening around us.
Nowadays, I have a very different feeling. After a time of intense personal transformation, I am in a new field of work around Positive Leadership and Mindfulness where I find myself thinking: this has not been done before, let’s find a new solution and this solution is driving change. This year is was the launch of our Positive Leadership Module to young people in Lebanon with UNICEF that is now driving large scale social change in the country. For me, this is leading change!
So living and leading change are both required at different times. Living change is a survival behaviour, designed to take advantage of the opportunities that arise in a changing marketplace. While Leading change is an evolutionary behaviour, designed to create something new, previously unthought-of and with a unique set of challenges for which no solution may currently exist.
Leading change requires a number of components:
- Metacognition (thinking about thinking) –Achieving a level of metacognition, that capacity to stand back, and observe beyond your immediate horizon is a critical skill. Mindfulness meditation is a personal practice that can enable you to achieve a level of metacognition.
- Creating a collective vision: Develop an inclusive and collaborative approach within your leadership team and organisation to help develop a collective vision. Doing so captures the collective mindset, infuses a clarity of purpose into all, and encourages individual ownership across the organisation.
- Sustainability: Change is not a short journey, will initiation of an organisational or indeed personal change may be immediate, the journey itself can take years. You need to focus on your own capacity to sustain your own wellbeing and performance levels. Establish a lifestyle, and mindset that enables you to continue to perform over extended periods of dynamic change and stress.
On October 12th in London at our positive & mindful leader summit, we will spend a whole day, discussion on how to lead change. Come, join and engage with us!
