What do you do when circumstances change?
Seth Godin laid out four choices in his post yesterday on Facing the Future at https://lnkd.in/d5vBQGRN
1) Deny that the world is changing.
2) Give up and shut down and stop trying. As he puts it, “embrace our perceived powerlessness”.
3) Control, which he describes as demanding that things go back to the way they were. This is particularly tempting for leaders who accumulated power in the previous circumstances.
4) Respond, where you “see and acknowledge the situation, then use [your] resources to make an impact”.
With the world changing faster than ever, handling change effectively has become an essential skill for leaders. The first step is to avoid denial, to understand the new reality and accept it. You can’t respond effectively to change if you’re not starting from what’s actually happening.
I like Seth’s duality between giving up and controlling as opposite polarities that create a false binary choice. The answer lies somewhere in the murky middle, and so exploring the territory between the extremes is what allows us to find a meaningful conscious response.
In other words, when things change, You Have A Choice. Go read my book to learn more :), or just follow me here as I keep exploring the ways in which leaders have more agency than they think.