There comes a time in history where old ways of thinking do not match with our desire to create a new reality. In this era of interconnectedness, innovation and rapid growth we need to make a conscious choice to change our thinking and actions to match what we are trying to create.
If we are trying to create organisations that thrive, both internally and externally, we need to shift our thinking, beliefs and behaviours to match.
The same thinking that got us here is not going to get us where we want to go.
Einstein famously said:
“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”
Individuals, businesses and large organisations struggle to achieve their desired results because they are caught in old patterns of behaviour, influenced and programmed by collective thinking that fails to adapt to change.
Organisations fail to grow and adapt because they lack the creativity and culture to make the appropriate changes from the inside.
Just like self leadership starts from the inside out, organisational change has to begin at the foundational level of a business.
Innovation comes from a culture of connectedness and creativity and in the 21st century innovation can make or break a business.
You only need to look at businesses like Kodak, Blockbuster and Blackberry to witness the effect of failing to innovate and change.
I’ve mentioned before that your results are ultimately a manifestation of your thinking. If you want to change your results, you must change your thinking.
So how is this relevant to leadership? Because the world is changing.
People are waking up to a new way of working. People are seeking more meaning and connection and we have a unique opportunity in this moment to shift our thinking and behaviour to BE the change that is required in this world.
Change and progression often happens like a series of rollercoaster moments but generally lines up with a linear progression, much like a trendline on a graph. We see business growth, the stock market, fitness programs, training, personal development, at some point or another follow this model. It’s the two steps forward, one step back analogy.
What we have now though is an opportunity to buck the trend of ups and downs, and linear progression and make an instantaneous shift to a higher level of awareness, thinking and behaviour.
There are many examples in history where a person, event or change in thinking (or a combination two or more) has led to radical, almost instantaneous change without the lag time usually experienced when trying to change the way things are done.
Take the example of Rosa Parks, called “the mother of the civil rights movement”, who invigorated the struggle for racial equality when she refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama.
Now, one might argue that civil rights and racial equality still has a way to go, but hopefully you get my point.
In athletics, there are two specific examples where the actions and achievements of one person led to a collective change in the performance of others.
In 1954 Roger Bannister broke the seemingly impossible 4-minute mile barrier. Since world records were kept in the IAAF era, people were running the mile in a little over 4 minutes but no-one could break the elusive barrier. For over 40 years, the feat seemed impossible, until Bannister proved otherwise.
46 days later, John Landy broke it again and set a new world record. The power of belief!
Now the record stands at 3:43.13.
You may have heard of the Fosbury Flop, the technique used to clear the high jump bar in athletics. You might not know that it was Dick Fosbury who invented this technique.
After having difficulty competing with the dominant jumping techniques of the period, Fosbury knew he had to change the way he jumped over the bar and he adapted his technique to eventually jump over the bar backwards, head first, curving his back and kicking his legs up at the end.
It wasn’t pretty – one reporter of the time wrote that he looked like “a fish flopping in a boat” while another called him “World’s Laziest High Jumper” – but it was effective.
At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, Fosbury won the gold medal and set a new Olympic record . By the next olympics 28 of 40 competitors were using his method.
The Fosbury Flop is now exclusively the method that all high jumpers use. Fosbury’s breakthrough took his sport to a new level.
These examples are what I like to refer to as a Quantum Shift.
Okay, so what do these examples have to do with leadership and what does a Quantum Shift mean?
Let’s turn again to quantum physics for a moment.
Everyday experience – and Newton’s first law of motion – tells us that a ball rolling in one direction cannot spontaneously start to move in the opposite direction. But such rules do not apply in the quantum world, where atoms have been observed performing this seemingly magical trick. It has been proven that atoms can jump back and forth between two stable states of motion that have equal and opposite momentum, without passing through the zero momentum state that separates them.
I once heard this phenomenon described as a quantum flip, where one atom flips instantaneously to the other direction.
Taking this phenomenon and applying it to the discussion about leadership in today’s world, I describe the change in thinking we require as a Quantum Shift. This is something that we can do instantaneously, without having to slow down and change direction.
We can, through our own thoughts and beliefs, change the way we perceive the world around us and make the shift required to lead our organisations forward.
What’s required in this new era of leadership is a Quantum Shift in thinking. So that we can accelerate the way leadership is practised without waiting for the delay as industries, communities and organisations catch up.
What’s required in this new era of leadership is a Quantum Shift in thinking.
With this Quantum Shift, we can change the way we do things, with a seemingly instantaneous result.
Leaders and organisations who are able to do this will be the leaders in their fields, the leaders of tomorrow, today.