“Growth is painful.  Change is painful.  But, nothing is as painful as staying stuck where you do not belong.” – N.R. Narayana Murthy

Last week in this space the idea was that doing things to stay safe don’t necessarily keep us safe.  After watching some leaders this week, I’m still thinking about that idea.  It keeps coming up everywhere.

It’s really amazing how much misery or stress or pain human beings will tolerate rather than make change.  No matter how bad it gets, it seems like we’re convinced that something else will surely be worse.  We just know that the unknown thing will be more miserable or more stressful or more painful.

That willingness to absorb punishment rather than make change is prevalent in both our personal lives and in the lives of our organizations.  I see business after business – and leader after leader – sink down into some level of failure and refuse to try to get out.  It can last a few weeks or months, or in many cases, years.

I’m not going to play psychiatrist, although there are probably some fairly obvious reasons why we do that.  What I will do is challenge you as a leader to not allow yourself to fall into that trap.

Think about the organization you lead.  What are your current areas of misery or stress?  Perhaps you don’t think of it using those particular terms, but it’s there.  Where is pain or discomfort for the organization or its people?

Maybe it’s in unaddressed cultural issues.  Maybe it’s in a process that drags people down.  Maybe it’s in a toxic external relationship that’s been allowed to fester.  Maybe it’s in a refusal to acknowledge that someone’s great idea from 2002 is no longer relevant.

Whatever it is, don’t simply accept the pain.  Identify it, name it, and start fixing it.  Leaders don’t get to just hide from it or pretend it doesn’t exist.  We have to address the things that hold us and our organizations back.

Get to work.