2- Leadership and Innovation: Relating to Circumstances and Change

Relationship to Circumstance and Change

I distinguish six different ways we can relate to our circumstance and the changes occurring all the time.  I claim that the way we relate to our circumstances becomes the foundation for our being leaders and opens or closes possibilities and opportunities for innovating.  If we consider that change is a constant and always occurring whether we know it or not, then we might also say that these six ways of relating to the circumstances are also ways we relate to the world  and become the contexts within which we deal with everyday life.  These should not be considered as progressive steps in a process.  Rather, these are different “states of being” or contexts available to every human being, at every moment, to differing degrees depending upon our commitments, concerns and

competence in various domains of action.

RESISTANCE – Opposition to circumstance

Probably the most common way we relate to change is to resist it.  To resist means to stand apart from whatever one is resisting and judge it as ‘not being as it should be’.

We resist in many ways: we can resist by simply disagreeing with a new policy, for instance, by analyzing something over and over again, or by playing devil’s advocate with no ownership of the issue.  Resistance can be overt or covert, sometimes we can resist by agreeing with someone and then gossiping when the person isn’t around.  We can procrastinate, argue, rationalize or even sabotage a change initiative simply by ignoring it and waiting for the next change to come along.

Whatever strategies or patterns for resistance we have, whether overt or covert, conscious or unconscious, active or passive, they have three things in common: First, all forms of resistance are “counter-innovative” and thwart human intentionality to create/own

change.Any effort spent in opposing what is occurring moment to moment will blind us to possibility.  Further, resistance gives power to the status quo or cultural inertia that, by its nature, will persist.  This is reflected in the often quoted maxim, ‘the more things change the more they stay the same’.

Secondly, all resistance is rooted in the past and is grounded in a negative mood/attitude and assessment of ‘the way it is’, a judgment that things ‘should be’ different than they are. Our commitments and actions are organized by what we see as feasible and that we know how to do. At best, this will lead to finding effective ways to cope and at worst will lead to a state of chronic suffering and eventually to resignation.

Thirdly, to resist implies that there is some thing “there” to resist which essentially objectifies our world including ourselves and other people, turning us into objects in an objective world.  This reduces us to either being victims of whatever it is we are resisting and/or encourages a ‘spectator’ relationship with the circumstances.  This means we no longer participate in creating the future, and become trapped in a worldview that destroys possibility and power. In this state, innovation is a rarity and an ideal.  When innovation

does happen it is usually attributed to some ‘special-ness’ of the innovator or more often explained as an anomaly that leaves us unaffected, untouched and not responsible for the change.

“Leadership” in this context is exercised through ‘opposition’ to the circumstance. For

the most part, this will prove ineffective to the point of becoming part of the problem. For example, in most organizational or cultural change initiatives, the prevailing rational is that the status quo is “broken” and needs to be fixed. The leadership is resisting the ‘way

it is’ and in a well-meaning way is attempting to ‘fix it’.  The problem is that these initiatives are rarely effective because everything being done to change something is pushing against (resisting) what is already going on.  This is how many issues persist even when there is widespread agreement that something should change.  Essentially the proponents and opponents to a leadership initiative are operating in the same context.

COPING – Positive reaction to circumstances

Coping is also rooted in a view that circumstances are objective and we must somehow adjust our commitments and actions to match what the circumstances allow. Coping might be viewed as a positive alternative to resistance as the coping person works within the circumstances effectively.  Energy expended in resisting is now redirected to

problem-solving and designing ways to overcome barriers to accomplishing one’s intention.  Like resistance, coping is also ‘counter-innovative’ as a relationship to change, but with one big difference: There are many innovations that are conceived as tools or strategies for more effective coping.  In other words, in a circumstantially determined view of reality, coping can drive innovation, but only as a RE-ACTION to the circumstances, not as an intentional force in creating new circumstances.

For example, “organized labor” was invented as a re-action to perceived misuse and abuse of power by owners and managers in the early part of the 20thcentury and has become an integral aspect of how work is accomplished.   In other words, the political- economic ‘institution’ of organized labor was a way for workers to cope with their circumstances.  While we can observe that this ‘innovation’ has produced a lot of value and benefit for workers over the years, it can also be argued that it has done little to build or address the underlying issues of trust and allocation of perceived power in organizational hierarchies.  In effect, the mechanism for coping reinforced and even institutionalized the problem.   Further, we can argue that successful coping solutions will often thwart and even undermine attempts at further innovations.  In the above example, labor organizations have generally attempted to block various proposed innovations in management such as cross-functional training, incentive compensation packages, self- managing teams and commitment-based management.

Leadership in this context is often facilitative and oriented toward reasonable

expectations and interpretations of what is possible and not possible.  In a coping context, leaders will typically be arguing for and justifying whatever limitation seem to exist and encouraging ‘work around’ or ‘in spite of’ strategies for getting things done.  While this

can be positive and produce results, the leader in this case become a well meaning and unwitting ‘co-conspirator’ for individual and organizational limitations.