The most effective people and organizations consistently choose internal instability for longer-run external stability.
Internal instability involves willingly pushing for change internally. It requires proactiveness, flexibility, and a willingness to disrupt our existing patterns. It means being curious about what is actually working or what should be done vs. clinging onto comfortable patterns. It is the natural outcome of adopting a learner’s mindset.
The downside of internal instability is that we’re never “settled.” We’re always becoming. Always evolving and changing. Always prioritizing discomfort and learning over comfort. That can feel exhausting. Especially so when we’re running large organizations which have a natural inertia and bias toward stability and predictability.
But the upside is that this ensures we change before we are forced to.
For us as people, this means we tend to our relationships before they break down. We exercise before it becomes a doctor’s order. We eat healthy before we’re asked to monitor our intake.
And for us as leaders in our teams and organizations, this means we reorganize before we are forced to. We change priorities before it comes “top down.”
The end result, in both cases, is often the same. The right things need to get done. The difference is why we do it and how early we get started.
That sounds like a small difference – but think about when you’ve done something because you decided to do so vs. because you were forced to do it. It makes a world of a difference.
Internal stability is the tax we pay to earn external stability.
