Stability is an Illusion

“Stability can only be attained by inactive matter.”

Marie Curie?

When I was eleven years old my family moved to Japan. At the time I was quite happy living a simple American life in Omaha Nebraska. It was where all my friends lived. My grandma, uncles, aunts, and cousins were only an hour drive away in Sioux City Iowa. Life was good. Moving to Japan was a shock, especially for my mom, she never recovered. Four years later my parents were divorced and my sister, brother, and I were back in Omaha. Soon, life would take another turn for the worse. My mom sank into depression, alcoholism, and mental illness.?

I learned at age eleven that stability and normality were fragile concepts. When I moved to Japan it took me six months to fit in, to gain new friendships. It was the same when I returned to America. After valiantly trying to play the surrogate “man of the house” I fled to live with my dad who now lived and worked in Oahu Hawaii. It was the same thing all over again. Seeking new friends, getting over the loss of my old friends, trying to fit in and trying to achieve social and emotional stability. It was after two years and yet another move, this time to Grosse Pointe Michigan, that I decided stability and normalcy were not in the cards, at least not in my life. I decided to stop assimilating and to carve out my own brand, my own sense of destiny.

Throughout the ages, being different, and more importantly, thinking different, has stirred both positive and negative emotions. Societies, and their functional subsets, governments, tribes, clans, family, and guilds, held collective and individual conformity in high regard. Non-conformity was ridiculed, ignored, or worse, stamped out as a threat to stability. Thankfully, today we live in a more enlightened world that often rewards divergent thought and applauds breakthrough behaviors. However, while we no longer live in medieval times, there is still an institutionalized reliance on conformity of action and thought. Stasis is comfortable, change is not.

When I was young, I found out quickly that my energy and insight wasn’t appreciated, more, it wasn’t tolerated. Without experience and positional authority, I wasn’t perceived as credible. Without ingesting and memorizing very specific knowledge, from only approved sources, my ideas and insights were considered irrelevant. I was told things like, stay in your lane, stick to your limited entry level role, or leave the thinking and problem solving to upper management. Being told how to think and worse, not to think, was frustrating for me, and I soon learned it was frustrating and debilitating for many other people too.

Being different and thinking differently isn’t hard to do, but it’s oftentimes challenging in the face of social and organizational pressure to conform. Innovative thinking that intends to incite change is perceived by many as destructive, even a threat. The question is, why? Why is creativity perceived by so many people to be dangerous? I believe the answer lies in the way societies, large and small, strive to control their populations through obedience, compliance, and risk intolerance. It’s easier to guide the masses gently and continuously than to entertain the madness of individual freedom of thought.

Companies follow a similar parental governance approach. It is interesting to note here, that if you ask people if they like their vehicles, their smart phones, their Bluetooth enabled devices, the response would be yes! Yet each of these expressions of creative genius displaced something else. They altered, shifted, or destroyed the status quo and by doing so became prophecy fulfilled. Change is disruptive and there is a price to pay for progress.??

Technology has consistently improved human quality of life for the last ten thousand years and ironically, once new technology has been adopted, humans find they never want to go back to the days when it didn’t exist. Of course, this loving embrace only occurs after a healthy phase of rejection, mockery, and denial, before grudgingly adopting and embracing the new normal. Most other forms of innovative change unrelated to technology go through this same cycle of slow acceptance.?

Technology is easy to see, feel, use, and perhaps appreciate. Other forms of creative change such as organizational redesign, bold business strategies, or conversion to hybrid work processes, are not so easy to understand. This inherent subtlety makes it more challenging to explain the benefits in a way most can grasp and accept. It defies easy communication and trust me; effective communication is the key to effective change management and acceptance.

Ten years ago, I toured a local office space before conducting a business development call with a potential client. A vice president lead me around the spaces proudly displaying their innovative approach to workplace dynamics. There’s was an open concept floor plan. Multiple meeting rooms available to all on a first come, first served basis. Everywhere else was filled with desks. Each desk had a low, twelve-inch carpeted privacy barrier. Just enough to hide the person in front and beside you, but low enough to stand up and have a conversation. I loved it! By the time the meeting was over I knew what I had to do.

The next day I met with my CFO and COO to discuss my brainchild. We were going to open the office space and create an environment more conducive to communication, eye contact, empathy, and morale. My CFO was instantly against the idea. Accountants need privacy and the existing eight-foot-high cubicle walls provided that privacy. My COO listened to the CFO and nodded his head. He agreed with the privacy part but then said he’d hated the egg carton feel of the office for a long time. Maybe there was a compromise that would work?

I bit my tongue and waited until they’d both had their say. Many of the accountants wore headsets and ear buds already to gain privacy while crunching numbers. Could we buy the employees sound suppressing headsets and then move forward with my big idea? Over the next few days, I thought about this idea and the more I did the more I resolved myself to make it happen. There was one more element I began to consider, a change that would directly attack the perceived perks and pecking order of my headquarters employees.

My first job interview before leaving the Navy was an eye-opening experience. When I walked into the plush offices of the regional financial company in downtown Baltimore, Maryland, I was stepping into a world as unlike a SEAL team as you can imagine. The entire eighteen story building was sheathed in green windows giving it the appearance of a magical tower. Everyone was courteous as I proceeded through an aptitude test and six separate vetting interviews, I couldn’t help but notice how proper and corporate everything appeared. That is until I was directed to my final interview.

I arrived on the top floor of the emerald tower and sought out the COO’s secretary. She was pleasant and asked me to wait. I looked around and noticed everyone was working diligently. A hand on my shoulder caused me to spin around and the secretary smiled. “Normally the COO is at his desk,” she said, pointing, “but he would like to meet you up in the executive lounge instead.” I looked where she’d pointed and noted the simple office desk sitting in the open near the center of the room.

I scanned the perimeter of the senior executive floor and saw it was ringed with opulent offices, glass half walls allowing the sunlight to flow through into the main space where we stood. Each office was appointed with high end furniture and art adorned the two walls that were not made of glass. I looked back at the secretary and asked her why the number two person in a successful company didn’t have an office. She smiled and began to guide me toward the elevator. “Because he wants to feel the heartbeat of the company. Isolation is a terrible thing for leaders to get used to.” She answered.

Years later when contemplating my own office changes, I remembered this simple lesson. I decided to do one more thing. This article isn’t about office planning, so I won’t go any deeper down that rabbit hole, suffice it to say we did open the space and then we went one step farther, we eliminate the offices as a senior management perk. No more visual displays of power and authority, no more access control. The leaders were placed into the general population. It wasn’t accepted by everyone and surprisingly, the junior and middle management leaders were the most upset over this physical change in status. That was quite a few years ago, and I’ve been at a desk in the general population ever since. The changes did create more social discourse and it made the environment lighter, more friendly. We added games, couches, and white boards everywhere to inspire spontaneous creativity and collaboration. Change isn’t easy but often change is worth the struggle. Stability can be useful, but we cannot let stability become the strategy, personally or professionally! ?

Marty Strong is a CEO, Chief Strategy Officer, motivational speaker, and the author of two business books, Be Nimble: How the Creative Navy SEAL Mindset Wins on the Battlefield and in Business and Be Visionary: Strategic Leadership in the Age of Optimization. His third book, Be Different: How Navy SEALs and Entrepreneurs bend, Break, or Ignore Rules to Get Results! Is due for release in early 2024.

www.martystrongbenimble.com