“I have not failed.  I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas Edison

We’ve spent a lot of time on change over the past few weeks.  Purposefully looking for change, pushing for change, etc.  That’s great, one of our loyal readers said.  But change is hard, and quite often it doesn’t work out the way you want.  Then what?

Good question.  Change is hard.  Even if you do everything right – you have a clear picture of what you’re trying to do, everyone understands why it matters and what’s in it for them, etc. – it’s still difficult.  And it doesn’t always work out.

That fact causes one of two responses from most people.  Either people try and make change, and it doesn’t go exactly how they wanted, so they quit.  Or, they know in advance that it may not work out perfectly, so they just don’t try at all.

Neither of those is acceptable as a leader.  If you’re trying to change yourself or your organization, and it doesn’t go exactly how you’d hoped, that’s not failure.  It just means you need to try something else to get the result you want.  You learn from it, you adapt, and you move forward.

And refusing to even attempt change unless you know it’s going to work out exactly the way you planned is even worse, because almost nothing ever goes the way we planned (quite often it actually goes better than we planned, but that’s a different blog topic).  You can’t “self-paralyze” because you’re afraid things won’t work exactly right.  You can’t just say “that will never work” and just keep doing what you’re doing.

You have to take the leap.  You go into it knowing that the outcome is at least partly unknown, and then you go into it anyway.  You prepare to adjust on the fly, and then you do that.  It will be bumpy, and sometimes it might not look great, but there’s no other way. 

Think about yourself as a leader.  Are you willing to embrace learning and change and struggle?  Or are you giving in to fear and standing still?  You have to move forward.  So start today.