Leading for Organisational Change

Chapter 15Energy

All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.

Isak Dinesen¹

 

The antidote to exhaustion isn't rest.

It's wholeheartedness.

David Whyte²

Things are always intense in the early days of a major change project. More than once during the early weeks of a project, I have cupped someone's chin in my hands like their mother and suggested they go home, eat something and then sleep. I am always struck by the sheer weight of personal responsibility that I feel at such times, sitting like a dull cold stone on the top of my chest. I feel over-caffeinated. Brittle. Such times require a lot of everyone in the business. The leadership team, the operational teams, the people on the ground, are all coming to terms with change, and new people and systems and environments.

These acute early-days situations have a lot to teach us about energy and resilience, their role in any change process, and about how our approach to change can either bolster or diminish individual and collective energy levels. That is what this chapter – the final chapter in this part of the book, the ‘E’ in our BECAUSE – is about.

Energy, or Resilience?

By Energy, I mean Resilience, right? Going back to our buzzword bingo, Resilience should be right up there next to Agility. It is a widely used term in organisations at the moment, and this is largely a good thing – being indicative, I think, of both a recognition of the turbulence that is an inevitable part of doing ...