Communicating Change: Disruptive Leadership From the Grassroots Up

We can't be creative if we refuse to be confused. Change always starts with confusion." 

- Margaret Wheatley

Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes.

To keep the blade sharp, you have to periodically walk along it.

Sound familiar?

Risk means doing things that are unpredictable, taking chances, walking the wire without a net.  We want the benefits that come from risk (new innovations, new policy solutions, the first place medal) but not the consequences of potential failure.  When it comes to teams, bosses are increasingly becoming risk-adverse; new investments and new ideas aren't being supported as they could be.  They're relying on more interns and contracts that can be let go of quickly if they mess up and no or little money lost.

What about those who do take risks, push the envelope, push buttons?  There are lots of those, but if you look carefully they aren't so much about taking risks as they are confident in their ability to avoid or download risk to others.  Look at the Senate Scandals; even now the likes of Duffy and Brazeau remain defiant.  Look at any of the other political scandals across the country - nobody is saying they took a risk and it didn't pay off as they thought it would, they're denying risk at all, or placing the blame for failure on others.

 

Look at Lehman Brothers.  Look at the polling industry.  Hell, look at our democratic malaise.  These folk aren't being bold or innovative; they're puffing up their plumage and trying to deflate criticism.  It's a huge difference; more and more energy is being spent on image, not accomplishment.  More and more blame is being placed on the staffer, the consumer, the voter.  When people are blamed for inaccurate polling results instead of methodology, we have an emperor's cloak problem write large.

To fix this, leaders need to be willing to take risks - not the self-serving kind, but the policy risks that may not have precedent and will need to be tested through pilots, revisited and worked through various iterations to get them right.  Look at the work Guardly is doing with Neighbourhood Watch as an example of what this looks like in practice.

 

Leaders need to equally be empowering, too - not looking for their team to fail so they can replace them with better people, but encouraging them to experiment and supporting them through the trial-and-error learning process.  Failure should never be the end of the road - instead, it should be a stepping stone to perfection.  What have we learned?  What can we avoid in the future?  What new horizons have been uncovered as we break down the walls of convention? 

 

At the same time, teams and constituents need to be equally willing to work with leaders at all levels.  We've got a bad habit in Canada of voting people and Parties out, rather than voting anything in.  "I will undo stuff the last guy did that you don't like" isn't a "why" and it's not leadership, but it what we keep asking for.  Ask you and you shall receive, etc. 

 

"What I stand for" is vastly different from "what I stand against" but we seem to have mixed the two up in the same way that we forget that "talking to" (messaging) isn't the same process as "talking with" (communication). 

 

Of course, communication isn't easy, nor is it common.  Most Comms positions these days are focused on messaging rather than a back-and-forth flow involving understanding and compromise.

 

I'd argue that true communication is the biggest challenge we face, and face poorly given the impact it has on our lives.  Communication requires all those soft skills we have trouble quantifying; empathy, lateral thinking, iterative thinking, design thinking.  It demands us to put something on the table first, freely, without the certainty of receiving anything in return; it means having a bit of faith in what the person opposite can do, given the right supports along the way.

 

True communication is a scary concept, a step into the unknown, a leap of faith.

 

Which leads me to one last quote to tie this up in a bow:

 

Do one thing every day that scares you.

 

The Best Innovations Start Free

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Commercial services soon followed, and though they started life as a free service – because operators hadn't figured out how to charge for them – it was quickly realised there was money to be made from texting as the number rose dramatically.

Texting started off free, and turned out to be quite profitable.  But, again, it started off free.  If the strict profit model had been applied here, we'd never have had texting - it needed to exist first for its value to be proven.  Someone had to take the risk by going pro-social with the service, first. The evolution of Facebook has followed a similar pattern - what starts off as fun, innovative and free becomes commercialized over time as the money people start to smell opportunity, then start to fear loss.

It all goes to show us - innovative value-add isn't tied to capitalism and can therefore exist independent of it.  Capitalism, on other other hand, can only exist where it has innovation to manipulate.  When time was, such was the case with feudalism and entrepreneurialism, too. 

When it becomes solely about profit and related status, personal risk ceases to be desirable; consequences get downloaded to those with less to gain and more to lose, reducing the opportunity for innovation.  Instead, sure things are what get bet on.  In changing times, there's little that's 100% certain - even the buckets one tends to think of as immutable, like natural resources, aren't the cornucopia we often take them for.

Innovation is essential for growth, but it's dependent on vision first, capital second.  Something to think about.

Spielberg Politics: Risk Doesn't Sell, But Vision Does

 

 

Taking risks is hard, of course, because fewer and fewer teenagers are getting off that damned couch.

 

 

And without new ideas, where is there to go?

 

 

Cloud Atlas is just a movie - a sprawling, narratively complex film that tries to get us, the potential audience, thinking about the bigger, broader themes that connect us as human beings.  It tries to make us break outside the bonds of our usual perspectives.  That kind of storytelling doesn't come cheap.  Make no mistake - new ideas do cost money, because they break entirely new ground. 

 

 

The Fountain, a film that challenged us to rethink what we prioritize in life and how we view death, tanked.  On the other hand Avatar, which changed the way we view film and immersed us in the breathtakingly complex world of Pandora, wrapped a ground-breaking vision around a familiar story we've seen in everything from Dances With Wolves to The Last Samurai.  In so doing, it struck the right chords of visually new yet narratively familiar; with a solid marketing campaign, these details helped propel James Cameron's alien epic to the position of highest grossing film ever.

 

 

Films don't come cheap and the people who fund them do so with one goal in mind - profit.  So, Avatar gets a sequel.

 

 

In that way, film making is a lot like politics.  Politics is also about coming out on top.  Doing politics is not a cheap affair and in a survival-of-the-fittest game of escalation, the cost just keeps going up.  Advertising, polling, producing materials, holding conventions, recording phone calls, oppositions research and now, finding ways to bring the conversation to the online places where the people congregate costs millions of bucks.  These activities are the political equivalents to putting out trailers, going on the talk shows and putting billboards on street corners.  The end goal in both cases is the same; get the potential end-user off the couch and out to the theatre/polling station.  If all goes well, you can keep mining the well with sequel after sequel.

 

 

Call it the capitalist model of democracy; sellers must tailor products they know consumers will want and then work hard to convince end-users the product isn't a want, it's a need.  Movie marketers will tell us their latest product is "the must-see movie of the year" or "if you see just one movie this year, make it this one;" political operators replicate this leitmotif  by telling us that a vote for the other guys will lead to "a thousand years of darkness" or that only a vote for them is a vote for a secure tomorrow.

 

 

In short - traditional marketing tries to paint a picture of the risk lying in not buying into their product.

 In general, people don't like risk - they like stability.  Even when they stand upon a burning platform, they will wait until the ground gives way beneath them before taking a leap of faith into untested waters.  Unless, that is, someone charismatic enough with a vision that transcends stability and embraces something bolder steps into the light.

Steven Spielberg is one of the most bankable directors in the history of film.  His movies consistently bring us fun stories, likable characters and all the action, scares and humour we could ask for.  As a filmmaker, Spielberg has also made some incredible contributions to the medium of cinema - Jurassic Park broke ground with its use of computer animation.  The film that really kick-started his career, Jaws, became the world's first blockbuster.  Yet, Spielberg almost gave up on Jaws because he felt it was just too big of a risk.  It was his belief not necessarily in himself, but in his vision that kept him going.  Perhaps that anecdote hints at his greatest contribution - a sense of wonder, but also a belief that no matter how bad things seem, there's always a chance they'll turn out better. 

One of the most iconic moments in cinematic history is an image of a boy and an alien riding a bicycle through the sky, silhouetted by the moon.  It's pure magic.  But consider; we're looking at a child, at height, wholly caught in the clutches of an extra-terrestrial force.  In its essence, ET is any parent's nightmare; in the hands of another director, ET could have been a story more akin to Invasion of the Body Snatchers.  Same holds true for Jurassic Park; the novel on which the movie was based is a visceral experience.  James Cameron, that other highly bankable director, has recently discussed how close he came to getting the rights for the book and how his take would have been decidedly darker.

Spielberg himself has discussed what he considers to be his master image; the heavily back-lit door of the mothership in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  It's a beautifully juxtaposed scene; whereas traditional popcorn fare like Independence Day or Mars Attacks relies on the idea of the unknown (as represented by aliens in big ships) as something dark, sinister and malevolent, Spielberg infuses The Undiscovered Country with light, embedding the unknown with hope.  That's his big trick, the secret ingredient to the Spielberg success.  Spielberg movies unquestionably cost a pretty penny, but they always turn a profit; more than that, they generally inspire us to think that just maybe, tomorrow won't turn out so bad after all.  He is consistently ranked as one of the most successful film makers in the history of movies.

 

 

The Bearded One's next movie is, appropriately enough for the times, a political one - a biopic of the 16th President of the United States.  I don't think it's a coincidence that Spielberg's Lincoln focuses on a man successfully leading his country through constitutional, military and moral crises.  That was a dark time in history, the future of the United States looked pretty grim.  None could have predicted then what America would have become today.  Certainly, there were those who felt being part of a Union presented too much of a threat to their traditional way of life and stood fast against such a risk.

 

 

Lincoln never wavered from his steely determination and steadfast belief in a risky idea - that a strong society must be a just society and that a united whole was more than the sum of its parts.  A polarizing figure in his time (and the first US President to be assassinated), Lincoln is now ranked consistently as one of the best Presidents the United States ever had.  It's hard to imagine what would have become of America if the risk averse had won the day.

 

 

On both sides of the border there are, once again, conversations about Constitutions, the military and what has become of our moral fabric.  Financial times are tight and nobody wants to bet on risky ventures.  In fact, the most common political theme today is that stability can only be maintained if we shut our doors to external risks or by fighting against those who might challenge our status quo.  There are always those willing to die to stop change, for they view change as death itself.  If there is to be a brave new world, it's these folk that will have the hardest time living in it.

 

 

An uncertain future is rapidly drawing nearer; the stability one generation previous took for granted isn't waiting for those teenagers huddled on today's couches, nor for the unborn millions to come.   We have plenty of leaders casting themselves as the least risky guides through the shadows of tomorrow.  Perhaps what we really need is a vision of the future our youth can aspire to be part of.  Whoever can inspire us with their ability to light the way forward might just be the kind of leader we'd be willing to take a risk on.