Where change is concerned, leaders play many roles. One important role is that of noticing shifts in the landscape and deciding how to respond to these shifts. It is easier said than done.
Not everyone notice shifts in the landscape. Just take the public transport and you will see many people too glued to their phones to look up. I am often amazed how some of these people don’t miss their stop.
Reactive, Reflective or Prospective?
In the same way, many leaders are too busy with chins tucked down to look around. They are too busy with too many things, doing copious amounts of routine work and not enough of the work of noticing shifts in landscapes. For these leaders, change usually catches them unaware. They are reactive when it comes to change. Instead of leading change, they are led by changes around them.
Rare are the leaders who take time to take stock of the situation around them and reflect on what appears to be changing. The key phrase here is “taking time”. It conveys an intentionality, a discipline at play. And with the reflective space created, they invest time and energy to attend to weak signals, to subtle shifts in the terrain, to reflect and to discern. For such leaders, they are more likely to recognise change as it happens, because they take time out to be reflective. At the minimum, as leaders, we should expect ourselves to keep pace with change in this fast changing world, shouldn’t we?
Even rarer still are the leaders who are prospective about change. These leaders look for the change they need, because they know what to look for. Then, they make those changes happen. Such leaders envision the future and chart a path from the here and now to the desired destination.
Our Reference Data: Stats, Stories, Theories or Tips?
It goes without saying that one should aim to be prospective about change. How can we do so? For starters, we need to expand the type of data we attend to for discerning and decision-making. Again, this is easier said than done, because we have preferred types of data that we tend towards. What do I mean?
1. Stories
Many of us like a good story. We perk up when we hear a good story. A good story can convey rich information for one to digest. Plus, it is great fun telling a good story. No wonder the majority of us learn best through stories.
2. Theories
A good theory? Less so. Theories are boring. They are for school, and they are too much work to digest, much less to create. Yet theory-building is an essential part of demonstrating mastery. When we engage in theory-building, we engage in the robust endeavour of synthesising, confirming, elaborating, and generalising. Each of those steps comprise a good amount of deliberate practice. No wonder a good theory is hard to come by. It is the outcome of much theory-building.
3. Statistics
A closely disliked cousin of theories is statistics. Not many of us like numbers. We find them dry. Unless you are an accountant, we find that they tax the wrong side of our brains. Yet, numbers don’t lie. They reveal hidden insight. Just ask Warren Buffet what numbers he looks out for in determining if he should invest in a company (it’s the gross margin, by the way). So be like Buffet! Get comfortable with numbers!
4. Tips
Finally, there is the issue of tips. We love tips! Many of us love a good tip for making money, but we hate the hard work of discovering what actually will work for us and what will not. Tips are, in our simplistic thinking, shortcuts to success. How wrong we are about tips! Because tips are synthesised wisdom from prolonged practice. Without practice, we have no tips. In a manner of speaking, a good tip is like a happy marriage – you cannot get it without putting in the hard work of derivation and confirmation for your situation. So while we love tips, we need to learn to love the practice that generates them.
Most of us gravitate towards one sort of data for recognising change. For some of us, it is tips. For others, it could be stories. We need more than one source of data to triangulate if change is on the horizon. What trends are we seeing in the numbers? What has past theories to say about the present circumstance? When we become adept at interpreting more types of data, we become better at being prospective about change.
What level of data do we attend to?
Beside a range of type of data to start out with, a prospective leader is also able to attend to data at different levels of perspective. Take for example, the issue of someone being late for work.
Surface
At the surface level of processing, one might simply deal with the issue of being late for what it is and on its own. Hence, the leader may regard the incident of being late in isolation from other things. “Deal with it and move on!” Sometimes, things are really that simple. Yet again, sometimes, things are not that simple. It takes wisdom to discern if one should indeed stay at the surface level of processing, or to dig deeper.
Symptomatic
Another perspective to explore is to ascertain if there is an underlying issue at play, to see if the presenting behaviour of being late is symptomatic of something deeper. This requires one to take into account trends and other sources of evidence, just like how a doctor would confirm a diagnosis. For example, a pattern of being late in a person may betray a behavioural trait. However, a pattern of several people being late in the same period may reveal something else, such as a morale issue. Like a good shepherd, a leader must know its flock.
Systemic
Yet a third way of apprehending a situation is to look at the available evidence, not just within the behavioural domain of being late, but also in other domains, and ask if there are more systemic interconnections at play. To be systemic, one must explore potential constellations of interacting forces to determine if relationships exist. For example, is lateness happening only when leaders call for meetings at a certain time of the day? Or is lateness happening only when a particular leader calls for the meeting? A systemic analysis is akin to a criminal investigator attending to possibilities, or a scientist exploring hypotheses. Prospective leaders must be comfortable being investigators and scientists.
Symbolic
Finally, yet another way to view the situation is to infer if signals are being sent, if the behaviour should be regarded as a symbol, a hidden code that one must read in between the lines to decipher. What is the person trying to say by being late? What is being said by not being said? To interpret symbols, a leader must have the skillset of an anthropologist and a psychologist.
Of Leaders, Smoke and Fire
In summary, leaders who are reactive about change often get burned by fire they are not even aware of. Leaders who are reflective about change can detect smoke before the fire begins. As for the prospective leader, that person is someone who deliberately starts a controlled fire in the right place in order that bigger fires can be put out.
What type of a leader are you where change is concerned?
