Change Leader? Who Me? Hard-Earned Wisdom for Those New to Leading Change is finally published. Here is the preface and opening story.

Preface

When I say ”change,” I’m talking about behavioral change, basically an individual doing something different or doing a familiar task differently. Behavioral change may require a new insight, new knowledge, and/or different skills. But what is important is that doing something different or differently happens because people choose to change. They understand the reason, the “why” of change.

Change in business starts with individual change, but it involves a group of people collectively understanding the why and acting together to change.

I spent thirty-seven years as a consultant, trainer, and facilitator of groups of leaders in business. When I started, I wouldn’t have said that my chosen third career (actor, booking agent, consultant) had anything to do with leading change. I thought that I was a hired problem solver, a researcher who provided new data upon which business managers could make decisions and act.

Even as a trainer, I saw myself as a communicator of new information, not someone who helped people change. I certainly didn’t see myself as a leader or think that I would change as a result of that work. I was wrong.

When I say leader, I’m not elevating the exemplary individual, the man or woman with such admirable traits that we enshrine them with a positive regard akin to hero worship. If such an individual exists, he or she might be good at leading change, or not.

Rather, I am spotlighting the individual to whom others listen, who can help others understand the why of change, and who gets people to follow through on the change effort.  Leading change requires a change mindset – understanding “the why,” the “why now,” and the penalty for not changing.

I wrote this book to synthesize what I learned over my years as a change consultant, helping leaders make strategic change, and perhaps consultants might get some value from it.  However, I wrote the book for the person inside an organization who has just been asked to lead the implementation of a new strategy, or an innovation or improvement initiative, or post-merger integration. Suddenly, you hear yourself asking, “Change leader? Who, me?”

Here you will find context for change (why does it feel like we are in a period of constant change?), core traits of change leaders, and helpful change levers or tools. I have also included stories of leaders, ordinary people I’ve met, who embodied some aspect of leading change. There are stories of my Boy Scout Troop Leader, a classic booking agent, an Italian haircutter, my mom, and Bruce Springsteen. These are not collectively exhaustive case examples of leadership, but stories that may help you shape your values as a change leader, as they helped shape mine.

This book begins with one of my earliest stories, told to me by Mico, pictured above, now my treasured friend.

The Change Mindset

I have a passion for things Italian.  I don’t know where this comes from; it’s strange in a Celt-WASP hybrid like me.  I first noticed this penchant as a very small boy, loving trips to Boston’s North End where I was pinched on the cheek by the round lady in the black dress at Mama Bertelone’s.  Later, in Rome for the first time, I relished the terra cotta dust on white marble and was amazed at the drivers to whom even the sidewalk was a rush-hour roadway. A warm smile grew in my heart.  I used to get that feeling on Sunday mornings at La Prima Espresso in Pittsburgh’s Strip District, listening to the old men roll the beautiful Italian language off their tongues.  Vowels and soft tones make swearing sound like Puccini.

One of my Italian vices was my haircutter.  He was good at cutting hair, but, in truth, I also went to him because I liked to hear him talk.

“‘Mico’ is sort of a nickname, short for Domenico.  It was my father’s nickname, and now it’s mine.  I inherited it, you could say, a family legacy.  It’s all right, but I would have rather had some money, say, five or six million dollars.”

“Mico,” I asked, “What would you do with five or six million dollars?”

“Hey, Alan, with five or six million dollars, I wouldn’t have to do anything!  I’d have enough money.”

We mutually decided that, really, our lives could be immeasurably improved by the “injection of a mere $250,000 in spare cash” and laughed.  The laughter was good.

Our conversation skipped lightly through politics, the arts, and food, and then swung to our ancestors: my mother’s grandfather, Pleatous McCaghren, and Mico’s grandfather, both immigrants.

“You could wonder how they did it,” I mused aloud.  “How they gave up everything to come here, eh, Mico?”

“Yeah,” Mico replied.  “You could wonder.  People say, ‘How could they do that?’  I’ll tell you how.”

I sat back and waited, realizing that day’s story was beginning.

“They could do that because they didn’t know any better. My grandfather and your mother’s grandfather didn’t know about all the things that could go wrong. They didn’t say ‘what if the boat sinks?’ or ‘what if we get sick?’ or ‘what if I can’t work or fit in?’ They didn’t know about those things.  They just did it.” Mico went on with a tale about his grandfather, as it had been passed down to him.

“First of all, they had nothing there, so what were they giving up?  Then . . . then somebody they knew went, and wrote letters home: ‘America.  America.  There’s opportunity under every brick in the sidewalk.’  They said, ‘The streets are paved with gold.’  They said, ‘Come and make your fortune.’  They didn’t know any better, so they went.”

Mico’s skin is the color of pecan shells; his eyes are shiny black coals, and they were twinkling almost Leprechaun-like with mischief. “Now, I’m not saying that my grandfather and your great-grandfather were stupid.  No.  It’s not that they couldn’t imagine all kinds of things that could go wrong.  But they didn’t know that they’d go wrong.  They didn’t know about trouble, didn’t accept it in their hearts.  They didn’t let it stop them.  They said things like ‘we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,’ or ‘it’ll work out,’ or ‘we’ll find a way.’”

“You see, they had the dream: America!  Opportunity!  And the dream kept them from knowing any better.  The dream kept them from stopping or being stopped by anything. The dream made what they had in the old country seem like nothing. The dream made it easy to give it up because it was nothing compared to what they could have. The dream kept them from knowing any better, and they just did it.  They left, came to America. They did it because they didn’t know any better.”

Mico finished cutting my hair.  He had no other customers, so we walked to our cars together.  We talked about the old men at La Prima and wished each other well.

That was years ago, and today Mico’s words still linger. In my work, I helped people and companies who were struggling with new strategies, and Mico had given me a blueprint for how to succeed at life-altering change:

• “They had the dream . . . .” Hold an inspiring vision of what will be after the change.
• “The dream made what they had . . . seem like nothing. . . .” Say goodbye to the past and focus on the future.
• “They didn’t know any better. . . .” Don’t accept obstacles in your heart.  Go around them.
• “They just did it.” Take action, in big steps or many small ones.   ACTION, not thinking, not trying, but DOING, is what makes change happen.

I didn’t know it then, but recording Mico’s stories started my career as a writer.  Now my second book available here.