What’s the Big Deal About Change?

Explore, Discover, Explore

Leadership does not require a title. Many people who provide the uplifting and encouraging influence of true leadership do so without authority or position. Change-Friendly leadership is not about ordering people around. It’s about engaging people’s heads, hearts, and hopes. Don’t diminish the importance of this by calling it “soft stuff.” Appropriate engagement of people is absolutely essential to success with all the “hard stuff” of organizational performance. And it must never end. There are brief stopping off points along the way, but it’s a journey, not a destination.

We can take inspiration from lines by T.S. Eliot: “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” Although I have offered a framework to make change efforts more manageable, I should underscore a critical point: Change-Friendly leadership is a continuous loop of exploring and discovering. No one has all the answers, or even all the questions, about dealing with change. But we can be certain of one thing. Genuinely engaging other human beings—the “friendly factor” discussed throughout my book—really does work. And as we mindfully apply these ageless principles, we can rediscover the joy of knowing them for the first time.