The Problem with Change: And the Essential Nature of Human Performance

Once, the job of leaders was to identify problems and fix them, while leaving nonproblems alone. But today, the notion that the new way is always better than the old way, and that if you aren't disrupting everything, you are losing, has come to constitute a new orthodoxy of business thinking.

Whether it's a merger or re-org; a new process, policy, or IT "solution"; or reconfiguring the office layout, change has become the ultimate easy button for leaders, who pursue it with abandon and thereby unleash an endless torrent of disruption on employees. The result is life in the blender: a perpetual state of upheaval, uncertainty, and unease.

Yes, companies need to grow, innovate, and adapt to changing needs. But stressed-out employees rarely go the extra mile, chaos rarely produces agility or speed, and it's hard to innovate or grow while bleeding talent to turnover and quiet quitting. This is how change stymies the very progress that it seeks.

Drawing on decades spent leading HR operations at Deloitte and Cisco, Ashley Goodall explores the essential nature of human performance and offers a radical new alternative to the constant turbulence that defines corporate life. By prioritizing team cohesion (instead of reshuffling teams at will), by communicating in real words (rather than corporate speak), by striving for predictability (instead of charisma), by honoring shared rituals (instead of corporately-mandated bonding), by fixing only the things that are truly broken (instead of moving fast and breaking everything in sight) and more, leaders at every level can create environments that allow people to do the best work of their lives.