There’s something rather seductive about a fresh start. A new year, a new job, a new role, a Monday morning, even tomorrow if today has already gone slightly off the rails. We seem to like moments that give us permission to draw a line underneath what came before and announce that from now on, things will be different.
I understand the attraction. I like change. I’ve changed jobs, countries, cities and directions often enough to have plenty of evidence for that. But actually changing something — rather than simply deciding that it should change — is a rather different proposition. And I’m increasingly unconvinced by that old advice that we should start as we mean to go on.
What if you don’t yet know how you mean to go on?
That seems entirely possible to me.
When we decide something needs to change, there can be an enormous temptation to leap immediately towards the solution. We make the plan, set the objective, create the new routine and decide what the new version of us will do differently. There’s a reassuring certainty to all of that, because it gives us something concrete to do and, perhaps more importantly, the comforting feeling that we are doing something.
The difficulty is that change rarely happens in quite such an orderly fashion. We try something and discover something we hadn’t anticipated. Other people respond differently from how we expected. Something that looked straightforward turns out not to be. Something we thought mattered enormously begins to matter rather less. And occasionally we discover that the thing we were trying so hard to change wasn’t really the thing at all.
Perhaps that’s because meaningful change doesn’t always begin with an answer. Sometimes it begins with paying better attention.
I originally wrote a version of this article around New Year, when we collectively become rather enthusiastic about transformation. Eat differently. Drink differently. Exercise more. Work differently. Become more organised, productive, disciplined or whatever other version of ourselves we have decided should emerge once the Christmas decorations have been put away.
Leadership can carry a surprisingly similar pressure. A new role arrives and suddenly there is an expectation — sometimes from other people, but very often from ourselves — that we should immediately know how to inhabit it. We decide we need to become more confident, more strategic, more assertive, better at delegating or stronger at communicating. All perfectly reasonable aspirations, perhaps, but I’m increasingly interested in the question that comes before them.
What have you noticed that makes you think something needs to change?
That question takes us somewhere slightly different, because instead of beginning with the person we think we ought to become, we begin with what is actually happening.
Perhaps you keep stepping into conversations your team could handle without you. Maybe you notice yourself becoming quieter around one particular colleague, or that a decision keeps being postponed. Perhaps you’re working harder and harder while somehow feeling that you’re achieving less. Or perhaps nothing is obviously wrong at all, but something simply feels different and you haven’t yet worked out what it is.
Those observations give us something to work with. They’re not judgements about whether you’re doing leadership correctly. They’re information. And information gives us the possibility of becoming curious rather than immediately corrective.
There is also a tendency to assume that if a change matters, the action we take needs to be significant. I’m not sure it does. Sometimes the smallest experiment tells us far more than another beautifully constructed plan.
What happens if I don’t answer first in the next meeting? What happens if I ask the question I’ve been avoiding? What happens if I leave that silence alone for another five seconds rather than rushing to fill it? What happens if, instead of assuming I know why somebody responded in a particular way, I ask them?
None of those experiments needs to become the new me. I don’t have to commit to doing them every day for the rest of my professional life or add them to a colour-coded development plan. I can simply try something, notice what happens and decide what I want to do with what I’ve learned.
Change doesn’t always need a grand plan. Sometimes it needs a small experiment and enough curiosity to notice what happens next.
There’s something rather freeing about that idea. It softens the pressure to know exactly where we’re going before we’ve begun and replaces it with something I find much more interesting: movement, attention and choice.
So when is the right time to start?
In the original article, I wrote that there’s never a good time to start anything, so just start. I still rather like the sentiment, although I think I was trying a little too hard to sound motivational at the time.
There probably are good times to start things. There are also terrible times. And there are plenty of perfectly ordinary Tuesday afternoons when nothing particularly significant happens at all.
The more interesting point is that we don’t necessarily need to wait until we have constructed the perfect objective, found the perfect moment or worked out exactly where we’re going. Starting gives us something that thinking about starting cannot: new information. We make a move, something happens, we notice, we adjust and gradually the direction becomes clearer.
So no, I don’t think you necessarily need to start as you mean to go on.
You might simply need to start.
And then pay attention to where you go.
If something is asking for your attention
You don’t need to arrive at coaching with a perfectly formed objective or a twelve-month plan for becoming a different person. Sometimes knowing that something needs your attention is quite enough.
We can start there.
