What Is Change?
For as much grief as we give the humanities, sometimes the best approaches to life come from poets. One of my favorite aphorisms was written by the Persian poet Rumi: “Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” Of course, everything around us is constantly in flux—look no further than the last five years to see how much can change in an instant. However, we affect the world through sustained, intentional practices. And that starts by looking inward.
In the era of Big Tech, everyone wants to be a disruptor. This desire is easy to understand: cottage industries have sprung up around figures like Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg explaining their meteoric success. These are disruptors in the truest sense of the term. Not only can we not remember what the world was like pre-Apple and pre-Facebook, but these advances have fundamentally altered our relationships. Still, chasing this sort of success is a bit like putting the cart before the horse. At a core level, everyone wants to disrupt their industry, the question is how do you do it?
As Rumi’s aphorism shows us, wanting to change the world can only come once we are positioned to change it. This necessitates an alignment of our goals and mindsets —especially for organizational leaders. When we have experienced repeated success with the same process, it can be difficult to change our outlook. But it is precisely when we are no longer succeeding, when we aren’t changing the world that it is time to look inward and consider what of our own behaviors might be worth altering.
One way to do this is by increasing our self-awareness. When we are focused on disruption or changing the world, we can often lose sight of how our attitude and perspective affects others. Another important step is to overcome our internal biases and interference. When we are only able to see the world through a singular lens, we can often lose sight of others’ needs and the implicit thoughts we didn’t realize we had. Ask yourself: what beliefs do you take for granted that could use a closer examination?
Another way of putting this is discussed in this Forbes article: “Successful organizational transformations rely on leaders’ openness to personal changes.” Oftentimes when we are looking to change the world, we view the people around us as a means to an end; however, none of us wants to be reduced to a description or a role. As people, we are so much more dynamic than our positions. But it is all too easy to view others as an impediment or stumbling block to our own success. When this happens, it is essential that we look to treat others as the people they are, not as the roles they fill.
The simple truth is this: when we change, the world changes with us. Rumi is right that real wisdom comes from understanding our own needs and desires and acting with integrity as we interact with others. When we do so, it allows us to meaningfully affect the world around us—and, indeed, to change it. While disruption might be good for quick, sudden change, the path to sustained impact comes from intentional action. Today is the day to change ourselves, and therein lies the root of true wisdom.
