Navigating Corporate Waters: A Blend of Dynamic and Static Leadership
On the Saturday prior to recording the Dynamic Leader podcast, I (Amit), said to my dad, “you know, I'm pretty sure I know what Shelley meant by “Dynamic Leader” - vibrant, energetic, inspired. But the word dynamic has another connotation in the world of physics, where it is contrasted with static. I’m thinking this might be a useful conversation to have on the show. For instance, dynamic equilibrium versus static equilibrium, dynamic relating to motion and static of course to not moving. So what if we suggest that we discuss how both dynamic and static aspects are critical to effective leadership. And with that, our conversation began.
It might be easy to see how a leader is well advised to be flexible, adaptable to the changing external environment or economic conditions, for instance. But how about the importance of the static piece? We all know companies whose staff are scared when their bosses come back from their most recent seminar. They can count on the rug being pulled out. And that is just as much a problem, isn't it? And sometimes, leaders are so scared of declaring who they are and what they believe that they leave it to chance that their employees might even guess at what that might be.
We've seen large operations, sometimes even public companies where there is a statement on the wall. But no one knows what it means and how decisions are prioritized. One of the things that we talk to leaders about is precisely how do you know what is truly important to a company? We are asked a lot of questions about how we manage change? How do we get people on board? And much of that discussion will be more effective if you know where you are and where you are heading. And I think it's also important to know where people are individually, and be able to meet them where they're at.
Host: Is it safe to remain in that static space, given today's environment, given how much things are changing?
Amit and Kumar: You know, when you talk about static leaders it is easy to think they're change resistant. They've been in their role for X period of time and they don't want to move. They're comfortable there. They feel safe and secure, but they risk their role being made redundant and being replaced by machines.
Host: So how do you deal with the static employees or team members?
Amit and Kumar: There are principles that govern this. There are two noted individuals from ancient times who talked about change. Heraclitus argued that change is constant. You may know his work from the quote, “you can't step in the same river twice.” And in some ways, your leaders or your employees are changing by virtue of the world around them having changed.
On the other hand, Parmenides , while apparently disagreeing with Heraclitus, made the argument that nothing ever changes.
We would argue that they didn't disagree with each other, though they are popularized as having disagreed. Two things can be true at the same time. What if we consider that change is the only constant? Then both philosophers are correct. And this paradox is expressly what leaders are dealing with, isn't it? In some ways to effectively run a business, you are running the business for success today, while simultaneously running the business and making calculations based on where the world will be in some future period of time.
We had an opportunity to continue the conversation we had between us with the host of the podcast. We provide the edited transcript here as the comments from listeners suggested there were many nuggets of wisdom.
Host: We know change is constant, so even people who like to think that they are static are constantly changing. Is there a risk with this fixed mindset that will limit opportunities in the future?
Amit and Kumar: For any of us who fail to adapt, there will be consequences. That has been true throughout evolution and there is no evidence that it will not be true going forward. The fittest are more likely to survive. Adaptability is part of fitness. It's not nice or good, evil or bad in some way. It is natural law. These models from nature are critical for us to apply back to that analogy of static and dynamic.
Even our own genetics reflects that genes are relatively stable over generations, or even billions of years, while epigenes react to a moment of stress and can turn on the making of one protein or the other instantaneously. So nature has both. Our lives demonstrate both. If we choose to ignore that, there will be consequences.
Manyleaders today misunderstand being “in flow” and replace it with ‘merely floating’ and without specific goals or roadmaps. They think being present is just trying to attend to the immediate issues at hand. And being able to plan for the future is something that they know that it would be wise to do but they haven't been able to find the space to prioritize that. No doubt that we have all experienced the same - you know there are things that you could be doing, and sometimes do do, to keep yourself busy every single day and not necessarily productive.
Host: Do you have anything that you can share with leaders around how they can approach that?
Amit and Kumar: Well, think of it this way, if I kept doing the same things I did today or this week or this month what would that look like? What would the opportunities or challenges be? That would be the analytic way to try to get movement. I think there is another way to search for what it is. There is something this leader truly wants and sometimes it is to survive the next five years. Sometimes it is to qualify for a pension. Sometimes it is to get their partner through an expensive medical treatment. There is always something that is pulling them. And until they see how making a change is going to help them get what it is that they most deeply want, it would take an enormous amount of carrots or sticks to get them moving.
Everything is a strategy including pretending to not want change. And if you are going to move a muscle, it is because you perceive more advantages than disadvantages. So I have found that getting the leader or employee to connect with what is truly important rather than merely figuring out the advantages and disadvantages of doing or not doing is most beneficial.
Host: Do we need to reconsider structures of teams and organizations in light of that to get the best out of what you're talking about?
Amit and Kumar: It would be wise to acknowledge what we would already know if we stopped to look at even a tiny sample of humanity. We know ourselves best and recognize that we only do one small fraction of the things we are told we should do and that's perfect because through the law of Eristic escalation, we know that whatever one side says we should do, some other side argues we absolutely shouldn't. So attempting to live our lives in subordination by following someone else's rules is a recipe for failure and disappointment.
When we climb beyond ourselves, and look at our intimate relationships, say a spouse. And how commonly one spouse spends the entire duration of a relationship trying to change to other half - and still complains.
Host: So I do think there is a role for laying out direction as a leader. But you have heard of WIFM, what's in it for me?
Amit and Kumar: There is a missing piece in leading others and that is being humble enough to recognise that the others only listens to what's in it for me too. And it is in part, in significant part, the job of the leader to help the direct report, the employee, recognise what's in it for them. What currency would they count? What currency would matter to them? And failing to recognise that leaves your organization chasing carrots and sticks - and we know that the effect of that yields diminishing returns. They call that hedonic adaptation.
It takes more and more candy to get the person to do the same thing. And we know too from punishment systems that it takes progressively larger punishments to get the same effect. So, looking at the intrinsic drivers is going to be the only sustainable way to move forward from a leadership perspective. One of the things that we do is to tap into those intrinsic drivers. I haven't found a more effective or lasting system. Think of it, religions have over millennia tried to entice us or scare us into one pattern of behavior or order, haven't they? Yet, we humans do the same things, perhaps with slightly more advanced technologies.
The tricks have been tried to manipulate humans, and I would suggest that we've got our answer. But, like so many other answers, if we don't like them, we keep asking, hoping that a different combination of balls will come out of the lottery machine.
Host: So I see my eight year old daughter do that all the time, and I want to know when do we start to learn that? Is that something that we just learn as little children?
Amit and Kumar: Well, you are thinking that when she asks again, that the answer would necessarily be the same. But she has read Heraclitus. She is not stepping in the same river twice. Think of the following example: when someone supports your values, you are more likely to lax the rules. So if your eight year old figured out how to sell what she wanted in a way that would help her mom grow her business and have two gazillion listeners to her podcast, you will agree. Yet if someone challenges your values, you tax the rules, they get more stringent. We see this play out at large scales where a company might be trying to do business in another country and hires us because the other country has these weird rules. Well, guess what? The country doesn't have those rules. It's some individual or group of individuals who have values that they wish to be met.
And so it isn't the country that's the issue. It's your failure to show them how what you want will help them get what they want. Most recently, Satya Nadella was going to let Open AI employees bring their MacBooks to work at Microsoft and not use the Teams app. So clearly, they had something he wanted, or Microsoft wanted, and Microsoft had something they did. So it's not just mom and pop shops that this happens in. And it's not just Shelly and her eight year old daughter. But you know, Microsoft as it was courting or defending or whatever it was, Sam Altman from Open AI, the same rules applied. If you help this trillion dollar company grow its AI operation, you can get the rules bent. We can't even get Office to change some of its password protocols for us. Clearly, we aren't doing as much for Microsoft’s global business as Sam Altman was perceived to be bringing.
The rules that apply to human behavior are universal. They operate in individuals, personal and business relationships just as they apply in chemistry or physics.
Let’s circle back to where we started: As leaders of our own businesses, just as leaders of our own lives, both static and dynamic components are required to thrive.
With Gratitude
Amit and Kumar Ramlall
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