FC Experts Blogs
November 28, 2007
Leadership: Waiting for a crisis
I was talking to a dear friend and fellow Coach this afternoon about ‘waiting for a crisis to change our ways of being’. It applies in all aspects of our life, work, personal relationships, and health, as well as the health of an organization.
To say human beings process things a certain way is to give validity to a perspective or paradigm that doesn’t serve us. Why wait for a crisis to implement change or rethink and reinvent something? Why not just create something incredible to start off with when everything is already good?
Could it be we automatically settle because amazing things happen to someone else, not us? Is it possible we don’t want to ‘press our luck’? Many become workaholics and yet won’t redefine their lives until their partner is about to ‘walk’. There are those who won’t redefine how a company operates until it’s in crisis and about to go under. Why wait until the last moment when digging yourself out is so much harder than building something new?
There might not be a simple answer, but I’d love to hear your insights on this.
Donna Karlin • Executive and Political Shadow Coach™ • Ottawa, Canada • •www.abetterperspective.com
Posted by Donna Karlin at November 28, 2007 3:07 AM | Topic: leadership |
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One of the things I talk a lot about in my presentations is the need for businesses to recognize the difference between a challenge and a dilemma.
Challenges are those insatiable requirements that will eat every minute of our attention and still not be fully resolved. Customer expectations are a classic example of this. You work like crazy to meet the expectations of your customers, and then, because your competitors raise the bar, or your customers get used to what you offer, or a breakthrough comes along, you find you are once again slipping behind, and so you launch another Herculean effort, and on it goes. The challenges remain. They’re frustrating, difficult, time-consuming … but ultimately, they’re actually part of being in business.
A dilemma on the other hand is much more menacing. It’s much more than a keep-up requirement. It’s a do-or-die requirement. It’s end-of-your-business-model stuff. It’s the new business model you weren’t ready for. It’s the buy-out that moves you way down the priority list. It’s the financial scandal that rocks your reputation …
The problem for many leaders is that, given how much they have to deal with, they see everything coming their way as part of the ‘to do’ list. Their radar is not tuned to tell the difference between ongoing challenge and incoming dilemma because they’re judging what they’re seeing through their eyes and not the eyes of their stakeholders, investors, customers, staff. That is, of course, until it’s too late, and suddenly they find themselves waist-deep in a dilemma and having to sift, sort and prioritize as those their business depended on it – which of course, it does.