Work and the will to change

Navigating the uncertainty, complexity, and tension in our organizations without sacrificing our souls.

"In our rapidly changing society, we can count on only two things that will never change. What will never change is the will to change and the fear of change. It is the will to change that motivates us to seek help. It is the fear of change that motivates us to resist the very help we seek."

Harriet Lerner

I’m frustrated.

I’m standing in front of a room of senior leaders.

They are tired. Heavy. Hopeful. They are looking to me for the answers. They want me to take the weight in my hands — even if it’s only for a moment in time.

Their repeated efforts to lead the business in the way it’s always been done have them swimming in apathy. For the lack of acknowledgement of their needs. For the lack of empathy returned with their tensions. They’ve given up as the constant tradeoffs have worn them thin. And yet they don’t realize they’re contributing to the very conditions they say they don’t want. 

I’m shattering everything these humans know about leadership. Everything they know about shaping systems in the business. Everything they thought was real and true about moving value — work, energy, money, information, power — through organizations. 

This is hard for them to hear. They’re telling themselves stories that they don’t have it in them to do work differently. They are pressured. Stressed. Depleted. They are being pulled by the different needs of very different stakeholders. They hold the responsibility of the business. The success of their verticals. The tensions of their teams and their people. The weight of their own careers, lives, families, and dreams. They have sought my help, and are resisting the very help they seek.

The ways in which we all are working and leading are no longer working. And the belief that we must deliver at all costs, no matter the impact to our people, is showing itself across all of our organizations:

We’re lacking connection, confidence, and inclusion in teams across the business. This makes communication a struggle because we're not listening or learning.

We’re not being honest with ourselves or others and we’re pretending that our fears, feelings, and stories aren’t getting in the way of delivering valuable work.

We’re limiting the autonomy, freedom, and flexibility that motivates and engages our workforce which makes our decision making — and work — centralized and slow.

We’re micromanaging with processes and procedures. We’re holding purposeless meetings where valuable humans, ideas, and voices closest to the work — and the customer — don’t get seen or heard.

We're attempting to plan, predict, and over-promise our way out of the uncertainty, complexity, and tension with strategies that are undeliverable or outdated the minute we’ve written them.

We’re creating organizations people don’t want to work for.

One of the hardest truths to swallow about the way we work is that we’re actively contributing to the conditions we don’t want to work in. We waste a lot of energy and effort working in antiquated, ineffective, legacy ways that we’ve inherited and fail to question. And many of us don’t know how to do better.

I've spent the last seven years of my career as an Org Designer. I’ve supported entrepreneurs, leaders, teams, and companies all over the world — from organizations like Apple, to those with hundreds of employees — redesign their systems and build braver cultures. 

I've learned a lot about what works and what doesn't. I’ve installed and tested infrastructure, systems, principles, and practices that bring flow and momentum to organizations. 

What I know to be true is this:

The Ways of Working in our organizations must be constantly balanced between our Ways of Being — the relational leadership that is required of us to lead with a strong back and an open heart in uncertainty, complexity, and tension, and our Ways of Doing — the systems, processes, and technology we actively need to flex and evolve so value — work, energy, money, information, power — can flow through our organizations. 

When we underinvest in our Ways of Being — which most organizations do — our systems break down. But if we only invest in relational leadership and the way we’re showing up with Ways of Being, we will be caged by the limitations of our systems and processes in our Ways of Doing.

We need both Ways of Being and Ways of Doing to solve the complex problems we will continue to face in our organizations. Leading and working in this way doesn’t change the challenging conditions we may face — be it the pains of growth, mergers and acquisitions, economic constraints, or otherwise. These Ways of Working change how we show up and move through these conditions so we can be our best selves and do our best work.

Designing and creating healthy, thriving, inclusive, human-centric organizations — the ones we want to work for — requires us to change the way we engage with work. 

Why work feels so hard: the discomfort of uncertainty, complexity, and tension

​​"We don't have control over this life
and a lot of it will be uncomfortable."
- Sarah Blondin

As humans, we struggle to acknowledge and accept that uncertainty, complexity, and tension are a natural part of our environment: 

Uncertainty: the constant ambiguity and shifting landscape — where priorities, people, and pathways are unpredictably changing.

Complexity: the many interdependent parts and pieces that require experimentation for wayfinding.

Tension: the necessary contrast that provides signal and points to opportunity.

We try to solve for our discomfort in our work environments by taking these paths:

1. We control. We predict and we plan. We micromanage. We make more processes and rules. We hold unintentional meetings. We hoard decision rights. We take away problems from capable people. We protect information. We overpromise and overextend ourselves. We disregard the emotions, fears, and stories that naturally show up in our work. We forget about compassion.

2. We escape. We avoid. We make excuses. We delay. We wait to be told. We wait for others to make a move. We backchannel and blame. We criticize and judge. We sit in shame and self-loathing. We give away our power and agency. We hide from facing the responsibility that's ours to take. We forget about courage.

Both paths create more work and organizations that don’t work. Both paths create hierarchy, bureaucracy, toxic power dynamics, inequity, and lag. Both paths keep us from solving complex problems like the lack of psychological safety, employee motivation, and employee engagement — which gives us resilience, trust, communication, honesty, learning, effective decision making, innovation, meaningful connection, inclusion, belonging, momentum, and flow. All the things we need to create the conditions to do our best work.

What will never change is — as humans and organizations — we will constantly swim in uncertainty, complexity, and tension. The environment we work in — and our lives — will always be this way. And facing these turbulent conditions as humans, day in and day out, is exhausting. Vulnerable. Hard. Uncomfortable. 

Especially when we’re not equipped with the skills, tools, and practices to face it. Especially when we don’t acknowledge and normalize the discomfort.

We’ll never get rid of the discomfort, but we can stop trying to solve for it. When discomfort presents itself, we can focus our energy and effort on building the strength, courage, and resilience to continuously step into it, listen, understand what it’s pointing to, and solve for that. We can make the space to process the fears, feelings, stories, and tension that manifest as discomfort and get in the way of the work. We can use the discomfort to teach us where we need to grow and how we need to evolve our leadership and our systems.

We can do that in the work with our Ways of Working.

Ways of Being + Ways of Doing = Ways of Working

“The small man
builds cages for everyone
he
knows.
While the sage,
who has to duck his head
when the moon is low,
keeps dropping keys all night long
for the
beautiful
rowdy
prisoners.”

- Hafiz

There is a CEO I adore. Hands down one of the most exceptional leaders I’ve ever had the privilege of working with in my career. He is quiet in nature. Genuinely curious. Not afraid of being wrong. He holds space without reacting. His ability to connect his intellect to his inner wisdom is beautiful to watch. His capacity for empathy and emotional agility are unmatched. 

He is breaking the mold of the traditional organization. This makes people uneasy. Nervous. Threatened. Despite the volume of their discomfort and doubt, he is learning to trust himself. Because he slows down and clears space to listen to that voice in us that whispers — never shouts — he can see what others can’t.

The world is lucky to have him.

I’m seated next to him in a crowded conference room. Every chair is packed with senior and executive leaders from different companies. There’s a palpable cocktail of excitement, fear, and resistance. Trust has not yet been earned. We are joining all of these organizations into one, and for weeks, everyone has been waiting on “the plan.”

In the fewest possible words, the CEO boldly shares his strategy: 

We start with leadership. 
We start with Ways of Being.
THIS is our business strategy.

Because he knew. He knew if we equip these leaders with the ability to manage their emotions, challenge their stories, face their fears, and advocate for their needs, they could navigate the uncertainty and the gravity of the challenges and barriers that lie ahead. 

He knew if these leaders could model and embody courage, vulnerability, and resilience, they would teach their teams to do the same and create greater connection across the business. He knew that with Ways of Being as a foundation, together these leaders could unlock and redesign Ways of Doing — the systems that would bring flow, momentum, and better performance to the entire business.

Over the next twelve months, as we navigate the inevitable challenge and complexity of integration and transformation, we invest in 100 leaders.

Dropping keys

We start small. We find the few leaders who are prepared to be the bravest ones in the system. The ones who will champion new Ways of Working in their leadership and pioneer them with their teams. The ones who are prepared to push into the flood of resistance that will always surface as the unlearning unfolds. The ones who will participate in knocking the bigger system barriers down as the legacy ways of working bump up against the new. 

The pace is slow. In waves, we create space for these leaders to come together in person — all across the world — to learn the Ways of Being. We teach them what leadership could feel like. How to be conscious of the limiting mindsets, behaviors, and belief systems — the ones we don’t care to question — that drive the self-protective and armored behaviors that get in the way of doing our best work together. 

We teach them how to recognize and manage the emotions and stories — that manifest as critical voices, self-sabotage, and seemingly insurmountable barriers on our teams — that will continually come up in the work. We teach them how to be in discomfort rather than solve for it. How to find clear seeing by experimenting and learning with small moves rather than resorting to the comfort of controlling with more big plans, or checking out entirely because we’re overwhelmed and afraid to make the wrong decision. These are skills that take time and practice in the work to master. 

We teach them how to get back up when things don’t work out — without blaming and judging others or shaming themselves — and own their impact in tough situations. They begin to practice how to talk to each other, not about each other. How to listen and genuinely be curious. And how to take care of themselves and be brave enough to rest so they have capacity for empathy and compassion on this journey. 

We talk about how unlearning is hard and they won’t always choose to practice their Ways of Being. And, that when things are at their hardest, their Ways of Being is the key to unlocking everything.

Opening cages

We then guide and support these leaders as they take their Ways of Being foundation into the actual work with their teams. Paired with Ways of Doing principles and practices, we coach the bravest of these leaders to lead and work in new ways. 

Every week without fail, for months on end, a small core group comes to sessions with their colleagues to share the tensions and roadblocks to trust, communication, connection, and getting valuable work through to the customer. We start to identify the blocks in the bigger systems that are causing friction — like how we share power and make decisions, and how we share and use data and knowledge — as they face into the challenges on their own teams. Small, integral shifts begin to show themselves on many teams as a result of all the small moves being made. And those micro changes compound over time as the bigger system starts to change. 

Starting with check-ins and improving their operating rhythms and meeting structures, these leaders learn to hold space for the fears, feelings, stories, and tensions that continually surface and get in the way of the work on their teams. They begin to reduce learned helplessness by unlearning the reaction to rush in and fix or solve problems and instead coach their teams to hold tension and strategically share the load.

They practice trading weeks and months of effort on perfecting plans for experimentation where they actively learn from the work they’re doing and use that data to steer each week towards outcomes that are aligned with the vision of the business. This takes many months to unfold as teams slowly risk the layering of vulnerability and trust with each other.

After months of coaching — leader by leader, team by team — we see change in parts of the business. Traction with the new Ways of Working is taking hold in just a handful of teams. More leaders have the courage and capacity to practice and model emotional intelligence, agility, clarity, and compassion with themselves, their co-workers, and their teams so they can lead through the uncertainty without it taking them down. 

Beautiful, rowdy humans and organizations

Giving these 100 leaders the skills, tools, principles, and practices of Ways of Working was just the beginning of preparing small parts of the business to navigate the massive amount of change, complexity, and uncertainty it would continue to face. And not just in the throes of integration, but also the struggle, constraint, tension, and discomfort that comes on a daily basis for any organization, and especially during hard times. 

Leaders shared that for as hard as integration had been, they could not imagine what it would have been like to go through it without these Ways of Working. And with this beginning, there is so much more this company will be able to achieve because they are equipped to lead and move through the fear and feelings the uncertainty and complexity will continue to bring.

When comparing an organization that has practiced these Ways of Working for more than two years with one that has not, these Ways of Working have made a noticeable difference both in how the business operates and performs. Both companies are financially strong businesses. Both companies are full of talented people. Both companies share the same conditions, but one holds the strengths in Ways of Working.

In the company that doesn’t have the skills, tools, principles, and practices of these Ways of Working, leaders and teams struggle with change. When times of uncertainty and tension increase, the business doesn't have the capacity to cope. Leaders choose to leave. And when these leaders go, systems break down as the business has relied so heavily on hierarchy to make decisions and get work done that it becomes a challenge to move work through the business. 

In the company that has learned and practiced new Ways of Working over a two year period, leaders, teams, and systems are prepared for the complexity, change, and uncertainty it faces. Leaders proactively manage challenge and difficulty without the need for detailed direction. They find their way through struggles rather than being blocked by them. 

The work is still hard, but in the organization with these Ways of Working, leaders and teams talk to each other. They choose to connect, share the load, and learn from each other. They spend more time in trust and less time in meetings. Work gets done more quickly. And where there is attrition, there is also resilience. When leaders exit, systems continue to function because leaders around them work together to find a way through the uncertainty and discomfort. They find a way forward.

Balancing Ways of Being + Ways of Doing

If our Ways of Being help us navigate the discomfort of uncertainty, complexity, and tension in our work environment — so we are equipped to show up in the best possible way as humans — our Ways of Doing allow us to shape and evolve the systems in the business so we can do our best possible work together.

We know when our Ways of Working are out of balance because work will feel more frustrating, challenging, and harder than it needs to be. We will fall into the trap of demonizing others. Of controlling, avoiding, or escaping the discomfort rather than stepping in, listening, and learning from what it has to teach us about our leadership and systems. When we’re stuck, we can diagnose whether the behavioral strengths of our Ways of Being are lacking, whether the systems strength in our Ways of Doing are overshadowing, or both — and vice-versa. 

We need both Ways of Being and Ways of Doing for value — money, work, information, power — to move through our organizations. But on their own, each component of the Ways of Working equation will only take us so far. 

When we’re teaching our leaders and teams to shift FROM planning and predicting TO experimentation, there is Ways of Being behavioral work to be done by letting go of our desire to engineer security with control. We have to practice facing the discomfort of getting messy as we move through all the work we think is aligned with our outcomes, especially when we are wrong and we’re struggling to allow the learning to guide us. There is also Ways of Doing systems work to be done by redesigning our meeting structures and operating rhythms, how we prioritize and organize the work, how we make our learning visible across the business, and what commitments and boundaries our team will be held accountable for.

When we’re teaching our leaders and teams to shift FROM centralizing power TO practicing the guiding principle of consent over consensus, there is Ways of Being behavioral work to be done as we notice rather than ignore the discomfort of a decision we may not agree with. We speak up and work through the vulnerable process of sharing power and co-creating a proposal that impacts a smaller portion of the business, is less risky, and safe-to-try. We practice trust by getting into the work, learning, and using that data to steer — rather than discount the idea and possibility of innovation altogether for fear of failure and making mistakes.

There is also Ways of Doing systems work to be done when decentralizing power by learning and implementing decision making principles and practices: simple, complicated, and complex into our processes and systems so we can share power, create flow and momentum, and practice making decisions with an integrated diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging lens. 

When we underinvest in Ways of Being or Ways of Doing, we work harder than we need to. We spend a lot of energy and effort knocking down one domino at a time rather than focusing on the strategic moves that will knock down many at once. We expend a lot of extra energy and effort because we’re afraid to go against or question the pace of the greater system. To slow down, zoom out, and challenge our stories and fears. We end up building systems around systems rather than having the vulnerable, courageous, and hard conversations that are necessary to shift the systems that are getting in the way of doing our best work. 

Creating healthy, thriving, inclusive, human-centric organizations people want to work for requires constant balancing of both our Ways of Being and Ways of Doing in our Ways of Working.

The will to change

I have the most brilliant and beautiful friends. Many who carry the weight of big roles — for organizations large and small. Many who care deeply for the well-being of so many humans across the world. 

And also for me.

The other day one of them was sharing with me the pressures her leaders are under. The fears they have. The stories that keep them imprisoned in imposter syndrome. The stories that steal their will to change.

I asked her, what's really holding them back?

She said most leaders don't even know that there's work to do to understand how we're leading. We think leadership is all about frameworks and giving feedback and functional things — heavily emphasized on our Ways of Doing. But many of us haven't reached the point of discovery that there's something to unlock within us —  our Ways of Being — that gives us the organizations and the lives we want.

Unlocking us as humans is what gives us the ability to lead in a way that allows us to become more of who we are, not less. And that unlocking does not lie in solving for the discomfort we feel. It's stepping right into it — the uncertainty, the complexity, the tension — and using that to discover what we're really made of.

What we’re doing with the way we currently work — maintaining and using the antiquated, legacy, hierarchically structured and bureaucratic ways we've inherited to lead and run the companies we've built or work for — is already hard. It brings out the worst in us. It’s not sustainable. And it comes with a lasting detrimental impact. It’s our responsibility to be conscious of what we’re choosing and what it costs us. 

What we’re already doing at work —

- controlling with planning and predicting
- micromanaging how work gets done so work will get done
- making more processes and rules
- holding useless meetings
- protecting decision rights
- taking away problems from capable people
- protecting information required to do our work
- overpromising and overextending ourselves
- disregarding the emotions, fears, and stories that naturally show up in our work

— are all the things that give us more of what we don’t want. It’s mediocre at best and costs us energy and time. We sacrifice learning, progress, momentum, flow, trust, and connection. We miss out on innovation, creativity, courage, belonging, and growth.

Breaking the mold we've inherited at work is hard, too. But these Ways of Working feel a lot better because they’re more aligned with being true to who we are as humans. It also gives us lasting and worthwhile outcomes.

The result of these Ways of Working — that are balanced with Ways of Being and Ways of Doing — give us humans who feel seen and valued, are more engaged, and do better work because they know they matter. These Ways of Working give us more humans who focus on valuable work rather than complaining, blaming, back-channeling, and criticizing because they’ve been given the skills, tools, responsibility, and support to be more of who they are at work. 

These Ways of Working give us humans who are resilient and have the capacity to serve our colleagues, customers, and communities because we have learned to take responsibility for and prioritize and manage our own health and well-being. These Ways of Working give us humans who have the courage and vulnerability to share ideas, try things, be wrong, work with others, pick themselves back up, and find ways to move the company forward. 

What I know will never change is how hard it is to be these courageous humans who choose to face our fears. Who —  instead of resisting — receive the help we seek. And who are willing to change the way things have always been done. Even if that puts us into an abyss of discomfort.

May more of us choose to be the leaders our world needs. May more of us choose to disrupt the legacy ways of working we’ve inherited and fail to question. And may more of us do our part to create organizations we want to work for.

**

This work builds upon the Navigating Uncertainty - an Org Design Manifesto from March, 2020.

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