Retail Observer

RETAILOBSERVER.COM APRIL 2017 44 Libby Wagner Culture Coach Libby Wagner is the author of The Influencing Option: The Art of Building a Profit Culture in Business, and works with clients to help them create and sustain profit cultures. www.libbywagner.com M odern business is addicted to the quick fix, the ten steps, or the fastest way. I get it. I understand that the primary force seems to be hurry up, cross the finish line first, constantly move with a sense of urgency. I get that our language is riddled with clichés about speed and its importance: the early bird gets the worm; the speed of the leader is the speed of the team; and speed defines everything. Even watching a film featuring images of the New York Stock Exchange floor is mind-dazzling. One of the places I find leaders to be the most impatient and craving speed is in the shifting and changing of their organizational culture. Once they realize that they want something to be different— it's time to change directions, or raise the bar, or sort things out— they are often ready to go and cannot understand why everyone else isn't waiting with their fingertips and toes on the starting blocks, ready for the gun to sound. "On your mark! Get set! Go!" It just doesn't work that way. In a recent client e-mail exchange, I found myself tired, exhausted, and at the end of a long day of wrestling with challenging conver- sations. I'm normally pretty diplomatic and thoughtful, especially in my professional conversations because, well, that's what I do. As I was reading his note in which he was expressing his long frustration with the fraying of the fabric of leadership in his organization, I felt like I often do: that my truth telling (as I saw it) was essential. That, in itself, was more efficient, even if I risked his approval for providing advice other than he thought he sought. I wrote: "The number one issue right now is communication and trust. These are built over time and they are broken over time. It's not a process that can be fixed in a workshop or a training or a magic pill. It's either a guided process with help and hard conversations, or you clean house of the most destructive elements and try to begin again. There is NO change without everyone's willingness to talk about hard things, truthfully and with vulnerability. I wish I could tell you it was easy, but it's not. It didn't happen overnight, so it's not fixed overnight. And, you're right, we are all imperfect beings, so it's messy. I know it will likely sound like I'm saying this in my best interest, but I'm really not. I know what I do works, but it's not necessarily an easy or quick fix. The only shortcut to building trust is radical, robust vulnerability." At the time of this writing, I don't know the outcome to the conversation we'd begun. I don't know if he will take my invitation to enter into that tough terrain that is the long haul of certain types of change. I feel a constant pull to tell people like him if he just does certain things, it will all be better: quickly and easily. But that's just not true. Dr. Ron Heifetz distinguishes between technical change and adaptive change, and this is an essential differentiation for leaders, and especially those who want to bring about change. In solving a technical issue, we may consult experts and advisors, we might find an essential and quick answer, we might even be able to Google it. But adaptive change is more complex and textured. We are asking for behavioral or attitudinal change, and this requires our ability to inhabit some strange terrain: a horizon where we cannot predict the future, where no particular outcome is guaranteed. We must be willing to be committed over time and over the long haul, and leaders must practice that radical, robust vulnerability that I mentioned in my email. We must be honest with ourselves and others about moving into and forward from a productive form of disturbance. Does this mean that we put everything about our work or businesses on hold to navigate this? Not necessarily, but it does mean that we get comfortable with the uncomfortable, and we push against the notion that a quick fix will solve a systemic problem or issue. The most important thing is that we stay in it, with each other, with our eyes on the horizon. THE LONG HAUL: WHEN THERE'S NO QUICK FIX RO

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