Risking it all

This past week we spent some time with Wolfgang Grulke and his new Hypertech series, "Beyond the Digital Economy" which looks at the advent of the Bioeconomy, which got me thinking about biological systems. We will save some of Wolfgang`s radical ideas for a later column, but I would like to think a bit more about transformation and biological systems.

When most people talk about change they usually mean incremental change, which is short term, limited in scope and can usually be reversed. The comfort of incremental change is that we can always go back to how things were before. It is, of course, much easier to stay in this area of comfort with the safety net of retreat firmly beneath us. In this mindset the ideal is a painless fix; we do a little, we confirm and carry on (or turn back). Very seldom at any point do we really dig deep down to face the hard questions and real challenges and possibilities. The result can at best be mediocre.

On the other side you have the real driver of change. The leaders who continually question the assumptions that are so easy to accept. They don`t accept the status quo and limited options; they challenge it, dig deep to find the real issues and opportunities, and find ways to transcend it. They have the courage to take creative risks. Courage is necessary because making mistakes and allowing others to make mistakes is part of what it takes to break new boundaries.

Why is this so crucial? The simple reality is that the future does not just happen, it is created. It is not something that we can sit back and wait for, but rather something that we need to creatively and actively help create.

Back to biological systems. Growth is the single process that unites the feelings, thoughts, actions and energies of every living thing. Human beings are made up of trillions of living cells. Living cells are forever in the process of becoming. Biologist and leadership researcher George Land says that we humans are given a significant role in determining ourselves through the way we choose to grow, through the unifying principle of transformation. This is achieved through pulling together our capacities and talents, harnessing our dreams and drives into a unified force for change and growth as a person, a member of our families and communities, and a participant of our business world.

This is quite interesting and exciting, but also very unsettling. The idea of real change, of creating the future, is based on the idea of a journey into the unknown; it is the process of creative transformation. This process implies great success or failure, it is major in scope and very different from where you have come from and there is usually no turning back. It almost always involves taking risks by doing things for which there is no clear blueprint and every aspect cannot be controlled absolutely.

At a personal level we have to connect to our deepest emotions to unleash our most powerful creative resources. Trusting our deepest intuition is a powerful mechanism, yet we often suppress this because of fear of failure and ridicule, we accept the status quo because it is much harder to go the transformation route. This in many ways is the reality of organisations and the culture that has been created. It is against this backdrop that real and fundamental transformation has to be achieved.

Another reality is that transformation does not take place in a nice comfortable cosy environment. It usually happens in turbulent times, when things are tough and in the presence of conflict. It requires great emotional robustness. This is a time when we test ourselves, when we draw on all the internal resources, when we have to find our sense of humour and the real extent of our emotional intelligence.

One last point: It is remarkable how often we find out that it is not necessarily the good times that bring out the best in us. During Wolfgang`s session we talked about bifurcation points. Life`s unexpected "collisions" with the barriers of time or circumstance. It is those moments when something so profound (personally, organisationally or even broader) happens that it turns us around and catapults us in a completely new direction. It is the creative intelligence that goes into finding the way to transcend those difficulties and turn it into huge advantage that is the catalyst of real transformation.

In the end it comes down to the power of each individual. This is best captured in a quote from John W Gardner, the author of On Leadership. He observes: "The future is not shaped by people who don`t really believe in the future."