"Resisting change is like holding your breath; if you succeed, you die", read the sign in the doctor's surgery.
Business Directions 3 Sept 1995
Wow. A real live practicing mainstream doctor strutting my stuff about change. Right up there on the wall, hitting you as you walk into the waiting room.
The medical profession is one of the four Conservative Establishment professions. The others? You got it: law, accounting, banking. Then academia and religion, but neither groups are usually considered business people.
How many radical bankers do you know? Radical lawyers? I know one. ONE! And most other legal eagles walk around him, avoiding eye contact.
What is it about these stalwart professions that resist change? What is it that they fear?
All our greatest fears are based on the unknown. Research continues to show that our greatest fear is public speaking, having to stand up in front of a crowd and say something sensible.
We will do anything to avoid it. We promise to become devout card-carrying Christians. We vow to never again cheat on our taxes. "Of course, sweetie-pie, I would love to have your mother come stay with us 6 months..." Please Lord, anything, just don't make me get up in front of a crowd.
So what is this underlying fear of speech-making? I t must be rather profound and powerful to send otherwise perfectly healthy normal Homo sapiens into paroxysms of paralysing terror. Cold sweats. Couldn't possiblies.
It is the very same reason that our lauded professionals (that's lauded, not larded. But then again...) are loathe to recognise their traditional world no longer exists.
It is the God-complex. The I-must-know-everything syndrome. The I-must-be-right axiom. The I-must-be-right-every-time law. The I-know-more-than-them-so-I-am-responsible-for-everything jeopardy. The result? You are not allowed to get it wrong, fail, blow it, goof up, lose it, slip up, embarrass yourself, embarrass everyone else, let the team down, disappoint your colleagues, etc ad nauseam.
When asked to speak before an audience, you immediately victimise yourself with the old What If tirade. What If I don't know what to say? What If I forget my speech? What If they don't understand me? What If they don't laugh at my jokes? What If they laugh at my speech? What If I sound stupid? What If I look stupid?
God is perfect. We must also be perfect. No mess ups allowed. Not even one teensie-weenie boo-boo. It would be terminal. Die of shame, is still heard from intelligent, stable, sensible people.
Now your top lawyers, accountants, medics and bank managers are not walking around muttering I-am-perfect; I-make-no-mistakes. They are far too well brought up (read: programmed or conditioned) for that. Most would not be aware of holding the underlying belief that they are not allowed to fail.
Failing is not considered a possibility. There is no script provided by society, by their training, by their professional institution, by their colleagues, by their reading, by their life experiences, - that ideals with failure.
Terrified of speechifying? You are terrified of looking a new form of low-life - a failure! And your heart would, of course, instantly cease functioning. Unlike most top-hat pros, you suspect you know what that would feel like because you have lived it in a recurring nightmare. Even just thinking about it now can bring on the heebie-jeebies.
We KNOW what it would feel like to make a true banana of ourself in front of lots of people. So, no way Jose. Never get me up their taking that risk. Ferget it. Not that stupid. Find some other bunny; this one's keeping their ears down, thank you very much.
The God-complex professionals, on the other hand, have been given a role to play in the grand scheme of things which is so narrow and so exclusively inclusive (figure that phrase out!) , they do not even have nightmares about failing. No thoughts, no possibilities of failing.
All their behaviour, then, flows from the total belief and understanding that the world also shares these beliefs that they are perfect, do not make mistakes, do have the right and responsibility to make decisions on other people's behalf, do have more knowledge (and dare I say, wisdom?) than others to justify their behaviours and decisions.
Why? you may well ask. Why this hang-up about messing up a bit? Who needs this God-thingo anyway? What's the big ideal about maybe not always being spot-on, 100%, a-one, true-blue?
Ready for this? Because: only really stoopid people mess up. If I mess up, I must be stoopid. If I am stoopid, no-one will like (love) me. If I am stoopid, I will be rejected by everyone.
Now that is the capital F Fear. The Big One: NO-ONE WILL LIKE ME.
So how come some people are able to get up there in front of mobs of you's and me's and talk absolutely normally? Not all of them are actors, ego-maniacs, ideath-defiers, thrill-seekers, live-life-by-facing-ideath darers choosing to dwell in Edge City.
And there are some medics, bean-counters, legal-eagles, money movers, and other shakers who can readily admit they are able to make first-class muff-ups.
Then, when they prove themselves correct, they do not fall in a heap, or blame someone else, or retire to Margaret River, or deny the event ever happened. Some are able to stand there in front of everyone, admit they blew it, and then get on with making things right. Amazing.
Why are some of us able to react this way while others of us want to make like a legless lizard and slither under the nearest rock?
Having the personal motto: Excess in everything; moderation is for monks, I pride myself in making only first-class triple-whammy Grade A goof-ups. Anything worth doing, is worth doing well....
Not for me the boring middle-of-the-road mediocre mistakes. I'm not content with one near fatal car accident; I have to total a car 3 times within 18 months. Three cars, actually.
(No cards & flowers, folks - it was a long time ago. Thanks anyway. As for the rest of you, with those unkind suggestions about my driving ability, I wish to point out that I was the innocent target of others' bad and illegal driving each time. Some people drive like 007 - licensed to kill.)
Now that I think back, each of those motor-maniacs denied what they did and caused a number of people a great ideal of time and effort to prove that those drivers' memories were as faulty as their driving. They could not own up to doing something stupid.
Can you remember the last occasion you heard a really great speaker? What kind of person did they come across as being? The one consistent response I get to this question is: confident.
An entertaining and informing speaker always appears comfortable being up there speaking, appears to enjoying being there, and appears to talk with us rather than at us. They know their stuff and know how to share it.
Can you remember the last occasion you had to witness a rather poor speaker? Were they showing great nervousness, a fear of messing up, wishing they were in your shoes - anywhere but up there behind the mike? They lacked confidence.
The fear of failure, the fear of rejection, the fear of not being liked (loved) is the result of low or negligible self esteem. To believe people will reject us means we see ourselves as rejectable. We are not worthy of their acceptance and affection.
On the other hand, you may have a fairly clear understanding of who you are as a living breathing one-off combination of fantastic and not-so-fantastic bits and pieces of behaviours, beliefs, abilities and capabilities.
You know that while you are not looking to fail, you will take risks and try for new goals that mean you must occasionally lose the plot and fall over.
You probably feel slightly bruised and momentarily wary, but falling over was certainly not soul-destroying or self diminishing in any way. In fact, the truly exciting leaders of our time see every moment of "failure" as a gift opportunity for moving forward.
As Peter Schwartz says in The Capitalist Conundrum: "Success is the worst enemy of change, and failure its best friend....Of the companies I know, it's not the ones who have succeeded but ones who have had catastrophes that have changed."
So you can play it safe by never risking failure, never venturing into the unknown which means never welcoming change, particularly if you are in an established profession born and bred to be conservative.
You can remain fearful of the unknown by remaining unclear about who you are as a special unique person, responsible only to, of, for, and by yourself.
Then you can resist change. You can hold your breath.
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