Leadership Lessons From a Broken Boat
The pressure of adversity does not affect the mind of the brave man…It is more powerful than the external circumstance. Seneca
Change is best led by those who have sailed in broken boats. Because the lessons learned from adversity are more powerful teachers than the lessons of success. Navigating change with the insight and preparation required to achieve broader and more satisfying results, requires the experience of fixing broken masts and torn sails with duct tape, chewing gum and a whole lot of adaptive ingenuity.
When searching for your program managers, change leaders or other key project resources ask them to tell you about their failures and mistakes. Those stories will tell you more than their academic or corporate pedigree. The deception of the perfect resume is that it doesn’t reveal the perfect knowledge required to lead change.
Seek change leaders who have weathered the storm and you will find leaders with the courage and spirit to stay the course.
Through the Eye of a Needle
Sometimes it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a change leader to take on the full responsibility of change . . .
A couple weeks ago I completed an Accelerated Change Readiness workshop with a project team for a Fortune 500 company. They were preparing for a technology implementation and the workshop was designed to help them think through the change management issues for the initiative.
We spent three very active days understanding the project objectives, assessing the organization’s cultural and political context, and identifying methods and protocols for stakeholder engagement, communication, decision-making, and conflict resolution.
It was intense, but fun, and the group, who was from various functions throughout the company, did a terrific job working through the project risks and creating a roadmap for managing change.
At the end of the workshop I pulled the project leader aside and asked for her thoughts. I wanted to know whether she thought the project team identified the core issues and risks, gelled as a team, and were ready to manage change on the initiative.
She looked down at her feet, then out the conference room window. She forced a smile and said, “I understand all that happened over the past three days. So many of the risks we identified described exactly why these kinds of projects have fallen short of expectations in the past. I mean, it’s true, we need to address these risks if we want to meet stakeholder expectations. The problem is that to get there, we will have to take on more than the stated scope. The team is ready to do it, but I’m not sure that I am.”
“What makes you hesitant?” I asked.
“Listen,” she said. “I know the best sol . . . no, make that the right solution, the right thing to do for the company, is to add to our scope and complete the other elements of solution design. But that would mean extra work, and for me, extra risk. Getting other stakeholders involved to weigh-in on the solution will make this more complicated. My job is just to get this project done on time. It’s not to resolve political battles.”
“I can understand your feelings,” I consoled. “Will you be able to complete the project without navigating around or through a few of those battles?”
“I’m not sure, but isn’t it enough just to focus on the project alone? That’s doing my job, right?”
This project manager was staring straight into the eye of the needle and confronting the dilemma many project managers must face: Should she work around the more strategic change challenges and get the project done? Or should she take on the larger challenges to achieve the more impactful result?
In my mind, as well as the stakeholders interviewed and surveyed prior to the workshop, there is no choice. Achieving the narrowly focused, “practical” result would be worse than awful. The end-users would receive the technology with a yawn and the project team would know they compromised. Executives may well call it a success publicly, but privately confess that the end result was uninspiring.
One of the great fictions of modern business is that the 80% solution is acceptable. All the talk about moving from “Good to Great” or being “In Search of Excellence” or achieving the “Tipping Point” and too many businesses settle for “good enough.” Just fly in an airplane, eat at a fast food restaurant, shop at all but a few grocery or retail stores, call into a call center, or ask human resources for anything. Most change initiatives also fall into the same pattern.
It’s not that any of the above is all that bad, it’s just rare that they are exceptional.
How often in your projects are stakeholders saying, “Wow! That was really well done.”
So my challenge for change leaders is:
Do you want to put any amount of effort into an uninspired result? Or are you ready to stay on the straight and narrow path through the eye of the needle to extraordinary.
The Courage of Followers
Derek Sivers, the founder and former president of CD Baby, shows in this funny and revealing video that while a leader gets things started, it’s the courageous follower that transforms the “lone nut” into a leader. It’s the follower’s choice to follow and encourage others to follow that makes the difference between an isolated incident and a trend. New followers follow the follower as much as, if not more than, the leader.
So, what does this mean if you are the leader? And what does it mean even if your leadership role doesn’t require that you are a trend-setting innovator?
- Stay true to your convictions. It’s your strength and commitment that sets you apart and captures the attention of those around you. It may take time for your ideas to catch on, but keep at it.
- Embrace and nurture your followers. Show abundant appreciation for those with the guts to walk away from the safety of the tried and true to follow you. And then . . .
- Collaborate. Make it about the movement, not you. Make your followers co-conspirators. Give them space to shine.
If you really want to create something special—whether you are the leader, an early stage follower, or part of the in-crowd—be courageous. Step up, show the way and know that your fearless example teaches and inspires.
A Revolutionary Case for Change
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government.
There are few documents that have more clearly stated the case for change than the United States Declaration of Independence. There, also, are few better examples of the patient, persistent and collaborative process required to align an executive team around not only a document, but more importantly the full knowledge of the implications of their commitment. It was not without conflict and politics and compromise, and it took time to reach consensus. In the end, and with history as our proof, the painstaking process of building this revolutionary case for change was a key reason for the clear vision and commitment of a new nation.
Happy Independence Day!






















































