Real change is annoyingly slow. Let me be more specific: Behaviors might change quickly, but it takes months for real habits to develop out of those new behaviors. You can’t trick the human brain overnight into believing that new behaviors are better than the ones it’s grown accustomed to.
Here’s the problem as a CEO. I knew about most of the problems within my company last year, while our books still looked great, before I admitted we were going to need the Year of Living Changefully.
It’s like when you break from your years-long healthy eating habits for more than just the occasional dessert. The scale gives you a pass for several weeks or months before the outside world can see what you knew each time you emptied a sleeve of Girl Scout Thin Mints or a bag of Fritos.
At first, when your favorite jeans didn’t fit, you vacillated between the surprise that it took so long to show and the shock that it was so bad. Perhaps if the scale had moved slightly when your behavior first changed, then you wouldn’t have formed the habits that led to the muffin-top above your waistband. Now, every time you try to satisfy your midafternoon or late-night snack craving with a handful of baked kale chips, you’re forced to re-live your failures.
This is what March has felt like during the Year of Living Changefully. January’s numbers were weak. Change had just begun and no one expected results yet. We felt good about our new routines. We were identifying problem areas and although we were fatigued, we knew we were doing the right thing. Still, the proverbial scale wasn’t showing any results. In fact, it was still screaming, “Boy! You really went overboard last year; you’re going to pay.”
With so little immediate gratification, it’s hard to stay on track. But that’s life as an executive. Instant gratification would be just that – fleeting and meaningless.
Turnarounds are slow. Real change takes an agonizingly long time. Meanwhile, to be the heroic leader of a massive transformation, you have to find a way to satisfy the people who have a right to know your plan, open yourself to their criticism, and let them remind you how bad the numbers really are – all while simultaneously cheering you on. One of your inner voices will repeatedly say, “Screw this!” while another will keep saying, “We are on track to turn this puppy around!”
Listen to the second voice, but don’t tune out the first one. You need its sage reminders that eating kale for every snack is not fun. That voice is there to help you remember how bad failure tastes, so that the next time you get lazy with your good behavior, you’ll notice it before good habits are replaced with bad ones.
One day, after months of habit-changing behavior, you’ll look in the mirror and realize, “Hmm… I actually look better in kale than I do in donuts.”
