Destroy someone else’s sculpture – what this exercise has to do with change and leadership
Jan David Ott is Facilitator for Longterm Strategic Decision-Making & Change at the Futurewise Company. On his LinkedIn account he takes us along on topics related to change management, leadership, and foresight. Here we publish excerpts of his experiences.
We stood in a circle – each of us with a self-made sculpture beside us, showing what we stand for as leaders. Sculpture by sculpture was presented. Closeness arose. A values-based sense of belonging.
Then the next instruction: Destroy someone else’s sculpture.
Even after years, I think about what this exercise has to do with leadership. Two possible approaches seem to me particularly relevant today.
Leadership quite often means contradicting – against directives, against slogans, and against the current. I could therefore have said (should I have?): I’m not taking part in that. Entrepreneurs bear a social responsibility.
And at the same time, leadership often also requires taking something familiar away from people. The status quo and the self-image in which they feel secure. Positions are cut. Operations are relocated.
Change leadership demands something special from entrepreneurs on top of this: a determination that is not coldness – but clarity of goal and means.
And that is exactly where this exercise and practice often have their catch.
It sounds so simple: change without direction is loss. Change with a convincing tomorrow is transformation.
But this tomorrow often lies in the long-term future – in the opportunities of the next 10 to 15 years, which open up only if we proactively tackle them today.
That is why I ask executives in my #FuturesSparring: What are you actually building up for the long term right now? For whom and to what end?
Without an answer to that, much of everything else ultimately remains merely continuous crisis management.
Leadership that deserves the name makes #Zukunftsmusik (dreams of the future).
I am curious about your experiences.