Even In The Most Extreme Circumstances, We Resist Change

Good morning friends

Today, I thought it worth reflecting on the dichotomy of change – that is both hard and necessary. This letter explores change and provides some inspiration.

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/ Strategy

Managing change is at the heart of a meaningful life. Yet, we don’t want to change.

Psychoanalyst Stephen Grosz reflects on this in his book, The Examined Life.

He recounts research that shows that people do not react to fire alarms, how at a restaurant fire in Kentucky people still queued to pay their bill and so lost their lives, how people in the south tower of the World Trade Centre hesitated to leave even after the north tower had been hit and so lost their lives.

Even in the most extreme circumstances, we resist change.

He says, “Committing ourselves to a small change, even one that is unmistakably in our best interest, is often more frightening than ignoring a dangerous situation.

We are vehemently faithful to our own view of the world, our story. We want to know what new story we’re stepping into before we exit the old one. We don’t want an exit if we don’t know exactly where it is going to take us, even – if or perhaps especially – in an emergency”.

Think about the Blockbuster, Kodak and Fuji Film case studies in last week’s letter. Only Fuji’s leadership was able to change, relinquishing their identity as a photographic supplier, embracing the uncertainty of change and the loss of margins, to emerge as a diversified group with holdings in healthcare and electronics. The others? Well…

These cases would hold no mystery for Grosz who, drawing on 25 years’ experience as a psychoanalyst, writes that,

“We hesitate, in the face of change, because change is loss. But if we don’t accept some loss…we can lose everything”.

This is a powerful lesson to hold in this moment. There is immense change. We may have to accept some loss.

/ Self

A few years ago Yahya Mayet, a gifted coach and group psychoanalyst, gave me the gift of Es’kia Mphahlele’s autobiography Down Second Avenue.

Mphahlele’s life is one of constantly seeking change, resulting in triumph against a system that sought to grind him down.

Reading it, I was both enraged by the world that he encounters and awed by the personal agency that takes him though multiple degrees to a PhD and a nomination for the Noble Prize in Literature.

Here is an extract, as he reflects on how systemic oppression can kill soul and ambition:

“Eventually you didn’t give life anything. It resented your efforts. The strivings and desires in you continued to torment you, to tease you out of yourself. But there was no exit from that prison. You knew it was your soul that was imprisoned.

Of course, the easiest way out would be to leave the soul in this cage, and start a new life, resolve to fling ambition to the winds and just become a thoroughly sensuous animal…Or you might deny the existence of that in you that cherishes ambition and the rest, and seek no more than food, shelter, clothing…Or you might booze away all the extra-physical stirrings out of your system…”

As he reflects on the pain of having one’s ambitions denied and the explores the options of drowning one’s soul in alcohol or indifference he concludes, that, “If you tried to go away somewhere and ceased to care you’d still be in the larger denomination of the world, which required men to care; you’d become a more bitter cynic; and while you shriveled up in the acid of your cynicism the world wouldn’t be at all worse off after your exit. No step backwards, and so you must move and fight with the rest for a better and greater South Africa. Do it in some way but do it. It’s not pastime but a desperate necessity…”

In this passage, he lights a path for all of us. As hard as the world is, as painful as change may be, as much as we may wish to alienate ourselves from others and our purpose, the only path that will give us freedom is to step in, to define our ambition and act to make the world a better place.

/ Soul

Elana Brundyn, the quietly charismatic CEO of the one of South Africa’s finest museums, the Norval Foundation, shared this beauty from the SA Youth Choir. It has the advantage that the backdrop to the music is Why Should I Hesitate, the first international exhibition of William Kentridge’s sculpture.

I loved the rendition of Redemption Song at around the 10-minute mark, and the comment by Joshua La Grange of the choir, “If you take Art out of Earth, you’re left with eh”.

What is the art that you bring to the world? The uniqueness of your story? Yes, change is hard but not changing can be calamitous.

I hope that as you step into this week, you can find some possibility in the midst of the change.

Best wishes

Karl

PS. Please do me a small favour. Head over to my LinkedIn profile and share my post about this letter.

(This letter was first published on June 21 2020)