‘Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep you balanced you must keep moving,’ wrote Albert Einstein in a letter to his son Eduard.
In a world where everything keeps moving faster and faster, is the greatest management risk not falling while you are moving forward? Is the real danger standing still, because you are afraid of losing your balance? Do leading edge companies often remain stable, not by resisting change, but by continuously adapting to it?
We often treat stability as the goal. Managers are forever creating processes, controls, always trying to reduce uncertainty, making things a touch more predictable and comfortable.
Yes, these things are important, but taken too far, they can create the very instability managers are trying to prevent. Like a bicycle that is just propped up against a wall, it can risk falling over. Just like a company that stops moving, eventually it loses its balance.
Constancy not required
Paradox is that stability can create instability. We tend to believe that by protecting staff from change we are creating security. But in practice, excessive stability can reduce an organisation’s ability to respond when change becomes unavoidable.
Down through the centuries, and in today’s AI world [and who knows what comes next], only constant is change. Markets evolve, technology changes and customer expectations shift. The writing is on the wall for those who are doing things ‘the way we have always done them’.
Counter-intuitive solution is that small, controlled changes today, can prepare a company for larger inevitable unpredicted changes of tomorrow.
On the bicycle ride
Don’t wait for perfect clarity. Gathering more data, having more meetings and develop increasingly detailed plans before taking action may not be the answer to try and get rid of that nagging uncertainty. Sometimes the fastest way to gain clarity is to just move. A small experiment, pilot project or customer conversation can reveal more than another month of analysis.
Act of movement creates information. Best to replace the various forms of prediction with experimentation.
Wobble is inevitable
A little wobble is healthy. A bicycle in motion only stays upright through constant adjustment. Your organisation works pretty much the same way. A department that never experiences disagreement, failed experiments, or uncomfortable questions may appear healthy, but it could also be avoiding learning.
Bicycle riding managers should create a space where people can challenge assumptions and test ideas, without turning every mistake into a crisis. No, the aim is not to eliminate the wobble. It is to develop the ability to recover from it quickly.
Best not to confuse activity with real progress. ‘Keep moving’ does not mean just keeping everyone busy.
Don’t confuse motion with momentum. Endless meetings, emails, dashboards and initiatives can create the appearance of progress, while in reality producing little value. Real question to ask is — What are we moving toward? A sharp leader has to distinguish between activity that consumes energy, and movement that creates meaningful progress.
Strange thing is that less top down control may create more bottom up capability. When a child learns to ride, no worried parent can maintain the bicycle’s balance for them. They have to develop their own ability to adjust.
An anxious manager, who makes every decision may keep things under control in the short-term, but the team becomes dependent on the lieutenant. Delegation is not simply about reducing a manager’s workload. It is about building an organisation capable of balancing itself.