Managers Need A Little Audacity

Benjamin Disraeli once observed that “change is inevitable; change is constant.” One of our readers laments this fact of life and longs for a return to “normalcy.”

Q. I’m a middle manager in a large company that’s trying to be entrepreneurial and “change the world.” Unfortunately, we don’t seem to appreciate the potential for damage to performance, productivity and morale that can result from such a “damn the torpedoes” approach. How can a company like this get back to a more normal, stable pace?

A. It doesn’t, if it wants to survive and thrive. In today’s business world, change is the name of the game. The success-seeking manager must learn to accept, adopt, accommodate and anticipate change. Indeed, the real edge is gained by foresighted, courageous leaders who initiate change.

This isn’t easy. It’s perfectly normal for a manager to be rattled by the unpredictability, instability and discontinuity that change incites.

“Bumps” on the path by which we hope to achieve “routine” success tend to make us feel wary and insecure. As a consequence, we can easily lose the bold, creative audacity necessary to perform as an innovative leader.

Unfortunately, change in the workplace always threatens a person’s job knowledge, personal relationships with other managers and employees, and the security of a continuing paycheck.

Our preoccupation with self-preservation on this basic level precludes the kind of performance we are capable of on higher levels. Lamentably, this natural tendency to hunker down, seek stability and avoid risks tends to make managers - and the firms they run - dull, dumb and destructible.

Renowned economist Joseph Schumpeter warned managers against seeking stability, predictability and “equilibrium” in their environments. He claimed that competitive survival depends on “creative destruction” triggered by managers who proactively upset the status quo with new and better ways of doing things at precisely the point in time at which the company seems to be finally operating as you have long wanted it to.

This, he believed, was the only way to stay competitive and relevant in the marketplace.

You are not the only manager being bruised by the slam and bang of change. The Center for Business Ownership recently conducted a survey of middle managers in rapidly growing and diversifying firms. Their top 10 “bitches” about the personal impacts of change would make even David Letterman wince. The “typical” manager complains that:

“I’ve lost control; I feel helpless.”

“Things are happening too fast. I can’t keep up. Our pace of change seems to be too fast for our own good.”

“We’re trying to do too many things, and we’re not doing any of them well.”

“Communication of ‘need-to-know’ information in our organization seems to be a thing of the past.”

“I have no sense of how I fit in the company’s strategic plan … if, indeed, there is one.”

“Our priorities are constantly changing. I never know what I should be tackling first, so I try to do a little in every area and hope for the best.”

“I can never get the support I need from other areas in the company. Everybody seems to be too busy fighting their own ‘fires’ to help me.”

“My voice isn’t heard. My ideas for improvement never get heard by anyone who is willing or able to do anything about them.”

“I feel that I’m working harder than ever but producing less.”

“When the future becomes the present, it’s almost always different than I expected.”

Sound familiar?

If you aren’t hearing gripes like these, your company probably isn’t moving aggressively enough. A good way to foster an attitude favorable to change among reluctant managers who are having trouble purging themselves of a longing for the good old days, is to cite the wise advice from di Lampedusa’s The Leopard: “If you want things to stay as they are … things will have to constantly change.”

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